When I read Barack Obama’s inspiring autobiography, Dreams From My Father, I immediately felt a kinship with him. Much like the former President I have spent time wondering exactly what my father would have been like if he had not died and what he would have thought of the person that I have become. Losing my daddy was the most traumatic event in my life but I have preserved my memories of him through my own experiences and from the comments that others often made about him. I have spent a lifetime searching for a way to know him better and imagining what it would be like to have spent adult time with him. 

My grandmother always told me that my father was a good boy, a model child, a loving son. I know that he adored his mother and reveled in being with her. While she was never able to read or write she devoted herself to educating him and he in turn shared what he had learned with her. He once tried to teach her but she felt too much like an old dog attempting to master new tricks and she finally insisted that it was too late to even try. She said that it crushed him to be unable to help her to master those things.

My grandfather was an avid reader and his love of books and newspapers and magazines seemed to flow naturally to my father who was slowly but surely building an impressive library for himself and for me and my brothers. Daddy came home from work each evening and immediately read the evening newspaper from the front page to the very end. He seemed to have a photographic memory because he would quote entire paragraphs almost word for word. After dinner his favorite pastime was reading from one of his books and sharing his favorite passages out loud while classical music filled the air. He delighted in seeing our reactions, especially those of my mother.

My father liked everything. He was an engineer but he also loved poetry and fictional pieces. He had so many humorous books, but also scientific texts that often predicted the future. He enjoyed sports of every kind and was able to rattle off statistics without even thinking. In many ways I remember him as being a hybrid of me and my two brothers. He gave me the gift of reading and seemed to pass down his genes to a brother who is a quiet master mathematician and engineer. Our youngest brother is a people person who loves jokes and being outdoors and looks so much like him that it is remarkable. According to one of my aunts, our youngest sibling also sounds just like our father.

One of my older cousins often spoke of how interesting my father was. He would come to our home when he was a teenager and he and my father would sit together talking about every possible topic. My cousin often opined that he missed those intellectual gatherings with my dad which was quite a compliment because he himself turned out to be an incredibly deep thinker.

My father made friends easily and our home was always filled with his buddies and their families or neighbors from down the street. He was a devoted fan of the Texas A&M Aggies never missing a game or competition of any kind even if it meant just listening on the radio. He loved the humorous shows on television best and his laugh came from deep down in his belly and echoed delightfully through the house. I really enjoyed sitting near him when he tuned in to his favorite programs like Your Show of Shows. I didn’t always understand the jokes but when he guffawed I knew that I should as well.

My father loved my mother deeply and the feeling was mutual. They had been married for eleven years when he died but they still walked together holding hands like two lovebirds. My father took great joy in showing his affection for my mother and surprising her with lovely gifts that reflected her beauty. He was as affectionate with me and my brothers as he was with her and he often took great pains to show us how much he loved us. I loved how he would lift us up into the air and tell us how wonderful we were.

I have often supposed that because my father had so many talents he had a difficult time finding work that challenged him. In his final year of life he seemed to be searching for something that he was unable to find. I have surmised that the death of one of his best friends and his grief over that loss had affected him more deeply than anyone realized. He was different after his buddy was gone and seemed determined to create more meaning from his life and work rather than just earning a paycheck. I don’t know that he ever got over that loss because the two of them were like brothers.

I loved it whenever my father took me along with him when he was running his errands. We would visit bookstores and libraries or we might find ourselves listening to recordings of the classical music that he so loved. His face would light up with unbridled joy when he found a new rendering of Beethoven or when he saw a copy of a book that he had been wanting to read. He shared his thoughts with me as though I was his peer, seeming not to notice that I was only eight years old. I loved that about him as well!

None of us were ever quite the same after my father was gone. My grandmother seemed to slowly shrivel away. My mother shouldered her responsibilities with aplomb but her perennially impish joy was diminished. I silently suffered and went into a kind of cocoon for many years before I finally emerged hoping that I was the butterfly that he had always urged me to be. 

There have been many Father’s Days since his death and I have remembered him on each one of them. The impact he made on me in a few short years is immeasurable. I somehow feel his spirit inside of me telling me to be kind, to be my best, to seize the day. My biggest regret is that my husband and children never got to meet him. I am certain that they would have loved him as much as all of us did.

I suppose that most of us remember our fathers as being the best, but in my case I am certain that I am right. The dreams from my father have unfolded through me and my brothers and they have been so wonderful. I see him in each of us and know that somewhere, somehow he is still watching over us.

Happy Father’s Day Everyone!