Any Other Father

I don’t really know if I would have wanted any other father. I mean, we had ups and we had downs but who doesn’t. He meant well, I suppose. He wanted things to be okay in the end. He just had it hard, you know, growing up and stuff. He never really had a father, so I think I never really had a father because that is all he knew. But he loved me. He loved so much that it hurt him that he couldn’t be a good father. He really did love me. And I really love him back.

I don’t really know if I would have wanted any other father. There are lots of fathers who don’t know a day’s work, but not my father. No, he was a man who knew what work felt like. He knew what struggle was. He was living it everyday. Pain was ingrained in him. “Real men are always in pain,” he told me. He came home at nights with bloodied hands and the darkness of a bad day smeared across his face. I was really proud of him those days because I knew a real man. I remember thinking how lucky I was that my dad’s hands told strangers that he was a man and that he knew what pain was and that today had been a struggle, but he was going home anyway.

I don’t really know if I would have wanted any other father. That isn’t to say that there were not days and moments when I wanted to escape from him, because there were. The door would open some nights and my mother and I would know from the smell to stay away from him. It wasn’t the whiskey smell we were used to. He smelled like hopelessness those nights, those nights when we avoided him. You may think that hopelessness doesn’t smell, but it does, and it did when my father walked in.

But I don’t really know if I would have wanted any other father. I would hide behind the kitchen door, anticipating the thumps of his approaching boots, heavy with a cloak of dried mud. He knew where I was, but he always pretended like he didn’t. He would open the kitchen door just enough to slide in and walk right past me, as he had done everyday that week. I was so happy that I had fooled him again. I’d jump on his back, shrieking with victory, and he let me. He always let me.

I don’t really know if I would have wanted any other father. On the good nights, on the nights when he came into the kitchen and he smelled even sweeter than the whiskey on his breath, I never wanted to let go. I would claw my hands into his thighs, begging him never to let go. He would thrust me into his grip and we would spin. We would both laugh as the world went in circles and we stood still together. I clutched him tighter as we moved away from my mother. “She doesn’t know how much fun we are having,” he would whisper in my ear, as my disappointed mother watched us ruin her home. I believed him when he told me she didn’t understand. I would close my eyes and let gravity push me tighter into his body.

My head still spinning from our adventure, he would drop me into my bed and the charm ended. I would look up at him to ask why he had let go but he never answered me. I sat alone in my room and listened as he stumbled through the hallway. My walls shook as he walked into his bedroom door. I heard his thick shoes thud onto the floor. The house grew silent and the magic died. But no, no, I don’t think I would have wanted any other father.