Daily Excerpt: GodSway (Keathley) - Daddy's Girl, Part 3
Excerpt from GodSway (Keathley):
Daddy’s Girl (part 2)
On weekdays, late in the afternoon I sensed when it was time to start listening for the sound of the Ford Fairlane pulling into the driveway. Sometimes Dad would stop at the grocery store to pick up a few things we needed before the weekend shopping. If he was much later than I thought he should be, I would fret and hound Mom every minute or two with my insistent question, “When is Daddy going to be home?!”
Finally, I would hear the car outside the window and race to hide behind the front door. I wanted to jump out and “scare” him as he came in. Many a time, Dad stumbled through the living room with a grocery sack in each arm. With me hanging for dear life onto his leg, he was trying not to step on me and fumbling to keep his balance long enough to set the groceries on the dining room table. Then, he’d scoop me up and give me a bear hug. The best part of my day was just beginning.
He used to wrestle and play with us kids in the floor. Ham that he was, he’d feign injury, telling my older sisters or Ken, “Oh, you broke my leg!” or “Whew! You’re too strong for me. Uncle! Uncle!” Well, being the daddy’s girl that I was, I thought it was my job to take care of him as much as it was his to take care of me. I would shout “Don’t you hurt my daddy!” and lay into the others with both arms flailing so fast that Dad would get tickled at my “windmill treatment.” He’d have to fess up and call the game off so that no one would really get hurt.
To keep the noise and bickering to a minimum on long car trips—a staple with four young children in such tight quarters—Dad would invariably start singing. Mom would soon chime in since she knew every word to the favorite songs of the period. I was enchanted from the beginning to hear them sing together. When Dad would forget the words, he’d let Mom continue in the lead, and he would start humming a harmony part. My first favorite songs were theirs—memorable tunes from their youth and the post-war era like “Shine On, Harvest Moon“ and “Young at Heart.”
I remember vividly the time I asked Dad to teach me to sing harmony. As he taught me to find the third note and listen for chord combinations in a certain key, I cut my teeth on classics like “Church in the Wildwood,” “Down by the Old Mill Stream,” and Mom’s favorite hymns like “Love Lifted Me” and “Ivory Tower.”
Dad was creative in the ways he countered our sibling rivalries and inevitable squabbling. He taught us a silly game in which two people would face off, one the kitty and the other its owner. The kitty was to meow, act distressed, and try to make the owner laugh. The owner was to pet the kitty on the head and say “poor kitty” three times without laughing or cracking a smile. We would giggle immediately at Dad’s goofy faces and silly antics when he played the kitty, but there was rarely so much as a hint of a grin when he was the owner.
In fact, in an instant, in the middle of a belly laugh at something, he could draw a hand down his face from his forehead to his chin and reveal a calm unsmiling demeanor on the other side and maintain it. His restraint was remarkable to me even as a child.
I practiced not allowing myself to laugh, along with more and more outlandish versions of a meow and increasingly exaggerated facial expressions as the kitty. Eventually, I mastered the arts both of soliciting laughter and of stoic composure and won every game with my siblings and friends.
Those ‘skills’ came in handy repeatedly later. When I needed to avoid would-be ticklers, Dad would respond to my complaints with “Just pretend it doesn’t tickle, and they’ll leave you alone.” I followed his advice and endured the tickling for a minute or two without giving in to laughter and found he was right. My older cousins left me alone after that. I’d taken the fun out of it for them.
Years later, as a teacher, it was easy to connect with students when I could laugh with them, even at myself, to put them at ease. Or I could put on my stern ‘teacher face’ in an instant when the occasion called for it.
On Sundays, Dad would brush out the dried pin curls, fold my lace anklets down perfectly, and tie the big bow just right in the back of my dress to go to Sunday school and church. He wasn’t going with us, which bothered me immensely at the time. I didn’t understand until many years later why. He was the epitome of love, strength, wisdom, and safety for me. He knew everything and could do no wrong, well, except the bangs. Those were blissfully happy early years.
Then, sometime when I was 4-5 years old, I started having horrible episodes of fear. I think they began shortly after Uncle Oscar died. My Grandma Harney’s oldest brother was scary enough when he was alive: old and scraggly-looking, with long yellow fingernails. He had false teeth that he would thrust out suddenly at us kids for the sole purpose of hearing us squeal. He would laugh gleefully at his success and then wiggle his bony tobacco-stained fingers, making the eerie “Wooooo” noise to get another rise out of us. Being so young, I didn’t understand his odd sense of humor; those were not particularly good experiences with him.
Then suddenly, there he was lying all stiff and waxy-looking in an open casket in Grandma’s living room. Everyone was sad and crying. I didn’t know what to think of it all, and it raised so many questions—questions I would struggle for years to find answers to.
The fear came on unexpectedly after that, at the mere mention of illness, death, heaven, hell, eternity. My thoughts would spiral out of control and waves of sheer terror would wash over me. I never knew when it would hit me.
One such occasion was triggered by a turtle expiring in the science room at
I was upset all day at school and inconsolable by the time Dad got home from work. I climbed in his lap and asked him to tell me about heaven. People always pointed up toward heaven, and my childish mind couldn’t imagine much beyond some sort of giant attic in the sky. What would it be like? How would it look? Would we be able to walk around? Would we all be together? Would there be room for everyone? That was a genuine concern for me since I had a very large and loving extended family on both my mom’s and dad’s side, whom I wanted to be included. I had so many questions.
That night was my first realization that my Daddy didn’t know everything. He didn’t have all the answers I needed. At least, he was honest with me. I never thought until years later about how hard it must have been for him to look into his daughter’s adoring, searching eyes and say those words so void of comfort, “I don’t know, honey.” He didn’t try to make anything up. He was quiet for several minutes before he went on. “I don’t know what heaven will be like, but if God can make mountains and trees, I’m sure heaven will be beautiful.” His answer seemed inadequate, at best, for me, and I suspect now, for him, too.
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