I can't wait to meet your father. And I can't wait to meet you.
My new self will be six years old next week. I like to think of her as Melissa 2.0. On the outside, it's still me - green eyes, dots of freckles running up and down my arms, the cute little smile. But the girl on the inside has morphed into a woman. She was born the day my father died in 2003. A few months ago, I mused about suicide, but I left the puzzle incomplete. I left out a vital piece. My life. My father. A man separate from suicide. How he died does not diminish how he lived. You see, it seems small - maybe even painfully obvious - but it's something I've struggled to accept. And now I have. This is the story of how he lived and how I became the person I am today - girl and woman, yet still his "Rosebud," his affectionate moniker for my sister and me.
MORE JUICE AFTER THE JUMP...
xoxo,
Mel
Even before I could walk, I learned determination and persistence from my father. Growing up with Freeman-Sheldon Syndrome, a rare genetic bone and muscular disorder, I had more than 26 surgeries by the time I was 15. Hospitals and doctors' offices became a part of my family's life. My father saw to it that I never lost my spunk. He became my Superman. My legs. My window to the world. When I turned 3, I pressed my feet against the soft sand along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico for the first time, seeing my red hair sputter in the wind and letting the cool water rush over my little feet. It was my father who held me for hours just so I could giggle and splash. I can only imagine how sore this made him, but he never let on about the pain. Instead, he gave his classic chuckle as I splashed my hands and feet in the water.
My father's persistence came in other forms, too - even in his attitude toward his own homework. Because of my medical needs, it took him 20 years to get his college degree. And as he got older, it became harder and harder for him to stay awake and finish his homework. One of his hardest classes was calculus, and some nights I remember him sitting in the living room, the lamp on, his reading glasses perched on his nose and his books sprawled out in front of him. Then, after a bit, I'd start to hear snoring, and I'd hear my mom walk out to the living room. She'd find my father's head resting on his books, his eyes shut in blissful sleep. He must have been the proudest man when he walked down that aisle to accept his diploma on graduation day!
My father taught me about love and compassion whenever he was with my mom. They had a love like nothing I'd ever seen before, and I always knew it was something special. Every time my mother would step in the room, my father got this puppy-dog look of love in his eyes. He'd get almost as giddy as a teenager, and you could tell that my mom became the only woman in the room to him. As a child, I thought it was corny that my dad called my mom "Dear," but now I realize that simple word demonstrated just how much he cared for her. To this day, I can't remember them fighting over anything more than the thermostat; my mom was a stickler for saving money in the winter, while my father's constant refrain was "It's cold in here" as he walked around the house in two heavy sweatshirts, a blanket draped over his shoulders.
It sounds strange, but my father - not my mother - was the one who taught me the art of small talk. It started when I was quite young, during our "father-daughter walks." When he came home from work in the summer, he'd take me to the pool, which was within walking distance of our house. While swimming was fun, what stuck in my mind was the walk there and back. As his flip-flops squeaked water and the hot sun formed little beads of sweat on our backs, we'd talk about all sorts of things - what I did that day, what I liked about school and one of our favorite topics, the universe. I was filled with question after question. He always managed to answer every single one of them. Another one of our favorite places to talk was the hospital. He'd sit right by my bed, holding my hand, and just talk. Just holding his monstrous hand, feeling the smooth skin of his palm - somehow I instinctively felt an energy, like holding that hand would make everything right with the world. And it did.
My father taught me courage when he least expected it: the day he got cancer. In 2003, a marble-sized tumor was found in his nasal passage, and the doctors told us this type of cancer was extremely rare and extremely serious - most patients did not survive longer than 18 months. My father underwent a rigorous treatment of chemo and radiation over the next two months. I remember going with him and my mom for his treatments, and sometimes he'd get this scared look in his eyes. He'd sit in the hard hospital chair, sometimes unable to sit upright, his head resting on his hands. This time, it was my turn to talk and hold his hand. I'd tell him how proud I was of him and how much he meant to me. Even though he knew how serious the cancer was, he still pushed on. I wonder how he did it, but he showed courage even in the face of adversity.
Sometimes I want to gather my father's spirit in a bottle and share it with every child. But then the selfish girl in me thinks otherwise and wants to keep her daddy all to herself, like those father-daughter moments we shared so long ago. A little memory between the two of us. Because in the end, it's not the sweeping portrait of our lives we worry about forgetting. It's the smaller details - the colors that blend in the painting to make that final masterpiece. My father's laugh. The glimmer in his eyes. His soft, Santa-like tummy. The colors of my father will never fade, and somewhere, somehow, I hope this little Rosebud has made him proud
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