Letters to My Daughter
Just something that came to me one day. As I played with it, I thought about four people I knew and intertwined some of their stories into this one. Anyway, I'm still on a quest to provide quality, unique content. Hopefully, you'll agree.
Relax; it's just a story, people.
[Copyright 2024, all rights reserved, including section 107 of US Copyright law]
My Daddy was buried two days ago. It had been six days since he passed away and I was still in a fog of despair. You see, my father wasn't like a lot of dads I'd heard about over my lifetime. He was my beacon of hope, my whisperer, when I couldn't get out of my head. My Dad was my rock and I leaned on him, probably overburdening him with my troubles through the years. He took it all, and yes, I knew that meant he loved me dearly.
I'd heard the eulogies but they passed through one ear and out the other. My brother and sister said some wonderful things about the man; even his stepchildren, who came into his life later on, said some things that took me aback, praising him for helping to make them whole. Some of those were things I'd never heard before since I was way too busy with my own screwed-up life to care.
This day was another in a succession of shitty days since he died. The family was going through his personal belongings. My father and his wife lived in a pretty small home. Even though it was a beautiful little cottage not far from the lake in their hometown, it was barely bigger than a double-wide mobile home. I still had a hard time calling her Mom because she came into his life after I was an adult.
In the backyard was his office, another 500-square-foot outbuilding and I'd been given the unpleasant task of starting there, going through some storage bins that contained his memories of us, many from our youth.
In that respect, my father and I were not alike. As I perused the trinkets and junk, it struck me that we were different in many respects. 'Why would he keep these trophies,' I asked myself.
Sure, he coached our teams and there were even keepsakes from my younger sister's 'miracle season' soccer team, as we'd coined it when I helped as an assistant coach. My father's forte and the secret of his success was to make everyone on the team just a bit, or sometimes, a lot better than when they started rather than just focusing on the players who already had skills. That magical season ended with us winning the championship game, minus two of our three best players. It's a hard day to forget, considering I didn't give us a chance in hell of pulling it off.
But time and again, that's what I'd heard in those eulogies the previous day, whether it be personal or professional; Dad always seemed to pull a rabbit out.
Wrapped in some plastic film, I saw papers and an envelope that made me curious. I carefully unwrapped the stack and right there on top was an envelope marked "Debra;" that's my name, Debra Holt, daughter of the deceased Robert Holt.
Beneath my name, it said, "Letters to my daughter." A tear left my eye and traveled down my cheek in anticipation of what I might find inside. Surely, he'd said everything of value to me while he was still alive. Or had he?
"Deb," is how it started out and I almost lost it right there. Everything was too fresh. Through blurry eyes, it would have been impossible not to read the next words without turning away.
"Sorry, kiddo," he started, "I thought of a few things I've left unsaid. I guess that makes me somewhat of a coward and I hope that doesn't make you think less of me."
I folded the letter and put it back in the envelope. The fact that there were seven or eight pages meant that by his standard, he was indeed a coward of sorts. I couldn't take it right then. The letter was back in the box only until my brain kicked in and then I folded it and put it in my pocket instead.
I went into the en suite bathroom so no one else saw me and wiped my eyes. After going to the bathroom and finding my siblings, I made an excuse to do a food run and asked what everyone wanted. I took their orders and headed out to face my misery in private.
And certainly, I knew it would be pure misery. My father may have been my rock and he had been many things to many people during his life, but I was not my father; I was nothing short of a disappointment. Every time I leaned on my dad, he also leaned into me, and not always in a good way. We'd had dozens of not-so-family-friendly conversations throughout my adult life. I often lived in the shadow of my father and that simple fact pissed me off to no end.
It hadn't always been that way. In truth, I saw more of Daddy's faulty side when I was still a child. It made perfect sense because he was younger then and hadn't learned from his mistakes yet.
My mother was a kind and considerate person, as I recall. I recall because she'd made some friends from work by the time I was four and started hanging around them rather than us. They were a bad influence on her but I didn't understand that until many years later.
Dad fought with her almost every day for a year, it seemed. She was adamant and even degrading to him, making sure he knew she was the boss of herself. It was her time and it was her body, I remember hearing her tell him once. As a kid, I recall being afraid and anxious a lot. It's weird but even at that young age I somehow knew they weren't destined to stay together long. After some of the ugly fights and vile words, I found myself wanting them to break up.
It didn't take too long to get my wish. Again, at a much later date, I learned that one of the guys she was meeting at the bar had introduced her to cocaine and when Dad found out, he had his lawyer lay it all out for her. She disappeared from our lives. My brother and sister were too young to remember anything of substance about her but not me.
I pulled into the Taco Bell parking lot, into one of the spots that provided some shade, and took out the letter.
"My dearest Deb," the letter began, "I've forgiven your Mother and, if you haven't, you should. It isn't healthy to hold onto those negative emotions because they grind you down little by little over time, culminating in a special kind of misery. As the song says, "Bitterness keeps you from flying."
"I married your mom when both of us were way too young. I'm not excusing her behavior or mine; that would be counter-productive. I only want you to understand the pitfalls of our relationship. While I worked too many hours to make ends meet, we also didn't consider any sort of protection. We wanted kids so I never gave it much thought until I realized that we couldn't afford to keep making babies so close together. Long after it dawned on me that your mom was stuck raising three children and I was never all that much help.
"Sure," he continued, "I changed diapers, cooked meals, and did all the fatherly things, but emotionally, I was of no help to her. Because of that, I believe she sought comfort first with her girlfriends and later, in the arms of her lovers. To be clear, I didn't make those poor decisions for her but I'd be lying if I said I didn't have anything to do with it. Remember that time I told you it was wise to always take fifty-one percent of the fault in your broken relationships? I want you to know I'm sorry for failing you."
Right off the bat, what he was asking of me would be hard to do. Maria Grimes, my mother, only ever visited me three times after she left. One of those times, she was so wasted off her ass, that she could barely stand. I knew she left a hole in my heart or my soul because I'd recently come to terms with that.
By the time I was in middle school, Dad had remarried. Sarah was a stout, no-nonsense woman. In her previous life, she'd been a committed foster parent so I think Dad expected she'd be great with his children. At least he'd vetted her qualifications. Lots of foster parents get a bad rap and some for good reason. The fact that many of her foster kids remained in contact after they came of age told a positive story.
The thing was, I didn't like her. There was no particular reason, either; I just didn't.
One of my biggest and probably worst decisions was that impetuous weekend after I came of age. It led me to many things that held me back for years afterward.
I went back to the letter and started reading the next section.
"Deb," he said. "That Saturday after your eighteenth birthday, when you told us you were leaving home, shell-shocked me. When you started yelling at Sarah and stormed out the door, I followed you. Sarah grabbed my arm and told me, "Let her go."
"That led to a vicious fight that neither of us could ever forget. You know we'd rarely ever raised our voices at each other in anger."
I hadn't known that until almost a decade later when my brother told me about it. I'd assumed that Dad had taken her side and let me go. It was a foolish idea because there wasn't any side to take. I'd gotten mad and decided that it was time for me to be on my own and that was that.
"You didn't even have any shoes on your feet when you left," the letter went on. "No bags, just your backpack, and then when I finally stopped yelling at Sarah, I stepped out front and you were just... gone. I nearly had a heart attack that day. I kept pacing with this sharp pain in my chest while I struggled to breathe at times. I've already told you that but I never said how angry I was at you. I felt betrayed and deserted. After everything I'd done to make your life better, you just left me."
I knew that too. My brother had given me a brutal assessment of the remainder of that day. He'd told me that my selfishness had an acute effect on the entire family for months. I hadn't given a care. That weekend was only a few months before graduation and a friend of mine, who'd graduated the year before, wanted me to move in with her. The idea of independence overtook me and my friend did what she could to feed my desires. She had a thing for me, it turned out. When she found out I didn't play on that side of the fence she kicked me out.
