Daily Excerpt: GodSway (Keathley) - Daddy's Girl, Part 1
Excerpt from GodSway (Keathley):
Daddy’s Girl (part 1)
Did you ever think about jumping off a building?
No, I don’t mean in a suicidal way. If that’s what you’re thinking, you should
call a crisis helpline immediately, seek professional guidance, and then finish
reading this book. What I mean is, have you ever thought about the
circumstances in which you would consider doing something so irrational,
illogical, and yes, dangerous, that you would never do it under normal
conditions?
Like
stuntmen in a movie, you’d want to know there was something there to catch you,
say a net. And you’d have to trust the people on the ground enough to be
assured they would hold on to the net tightly, not to let you hit the ground,
right? It would help to know they’d had lots of practice and had successfully
held the net for other jumpers. And you’d probably want to talk first-hand to
those guys, or at least read up on what their experiences were like.
At
this point, you’re probably saying to yourself, “No, I’d just go back inside
and take the elevator or stairs down to the first floor.” Yeah, that would be
much easier and safer. But what if the building were on fire, the elevator
jammed, and the stairwell impassable from thick smoke? When the usual safe
predictable modes of exit are not an option, then what?
Even
if the well trained and experienced fire fighters on the ground were yelling at
you, commanding you to jump, it would still be hard to get past your fear and
actually fling yourself off the edge, right? Remember when you were a kid and
your Dad coaxed you into jumping off the side of the pool, into his waiting
arms there in the water? Even that was hard – at least the first time. But off
a building? Well maybe, if the fire fighter was your Dad, and you were five.
But
what if the building is starting to collapse and the flames are at your back? I
can pretty much guarantee the immediate threat of the buckling walls will
outweigh your fear of what might happen if you jump. You’ll obey the
fire fighter’s command and take the leap—even if he’s not your dad. It will be
out of desperation, because there is no other choice. But once you’re safely on
the ground, you realize that if you ever have to do it again you won’t even
hesitate the next time. It will be a leap of faith. You’ll trust the net
holders, based on a real past outcome.
That’s the situation I was in on the highway in a spinning, bouncing automobile when my Father commanded me to, well, not exactly jump. Since the analogy is breaking down and I’m getting way ahead of myself, let’s put it in perspective and start from the beginning…
I was a classic example of a
“Daddy’s girl.” When my brother Kenny came along just 11 months behind me, I
was still a baby myself. My dad used to joke, when people would ask if we were
twins, that we were “twins on the installment plan.”
During the daytime, when Dad
was at work, my mother learned to juggle Kenny and me from high chair to
playpen to naptime all on her own, while also taking care of my two older
sisters, who were still very young. There are even reports Mom was seen more than
once with me cradled in one arm and Kenny in the other, feeding me spoonsful of
baby food while giving him a bottle simultaneously. Even before multitasking
was a word, she was definitely a super mom!
In the evenings and on
weekends, however, while Mom was busy with the newest addition—and the rest of
the household, Dad took me under his wing. At mealtime, he cut my food and fed
me, smashing my baked potatoes to a perfect paste of half butter and half
potato. He would fly the airplane into the hangar, a metaphor from his war
years, to get the green beans down me.
Though
he didn’t talk about the war much when we were growing up, war references were
always in the background. He would playfully “circle for the landing” and
finally “set her down easy” while feeding Kenny or me. I thought it was such a
grand game! Even as a pretty big kid of four years old I would plead with him
at dinnertime, after he had cut up my meat, “Daddy, feed me, feed me! ” On
other occasions, when we misbehaved, his scolding glare was always in tandem
with the war-era admonition to “straighten up and fly right!”
From
as early as the feedings in the high chair, I was fascinated with his
references to flying. My eyes followed the swirling spoon through the air and
to my mouth long before I understood the actual words he was saying.
Dad’s
favorite poem was “High Flight,” written by a young Canadian pilot, John
Gillespie Magee Jr., not long before he crashed and died early in the war. Dad
used to quote lines from the poem, to my great pleasure,
Oh! I have slipped the
surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on
laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed
and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds—and
done a hundred things
You have not dreamed
of…
These
images and sensations described by the poet had struck a chord with Dad because
he’d experienced them with an equal exuberance. He laughed with delight telling
my uncles about doing barrel rolls and stalls with the new recruits. Just at
the point when the nose of the plane comes down out of a stall and they’d start
into the dive, he’d watch with amusement as some of the recruits got sick and
others “had the stomach for it.” He truly loved flying, at least the thrill of
it.
In
his older years, once in a while Dad would open up and share other kinds of
experiences from the war. I know now they were life-changing for him. He told
us about when he was a flight instructor in India and China, responsible for
training groups of young pilots to take off and land within a very specific
short and narrow space. They had to be so exact. So precise in their judgements
and actions. He would mark off the distance on the field to represent the space
on an aircraft carrier within which they would have to maneuver. He wanted to
drill it in during practice so it would be second nature when the new pilots
actually had to make those difficult takeoffs and landings when it counted in
combat.
He
spoke with reverence and would tear up 50 years later telling of an incident in
which one young man, whose name I don’t remember but he recalled instantly
while recounting the tragedy, didn’t quite get it right. The young would-be
pilot crashed into the runway while Dad and others looked on. The weight of
responsibility fell heavily on him to make sure he did everything he possibly
could to train them well, and the loss was personal.
He told of another time when he was
on a patrol mission, not in a battle but looking for enemy presence in the
area. The small squadron finished their rounds and headed back to the base when
for some reason Dad decided to make one more pass. He came out of a thick cloud
into a small clear patch only to see an enemy plane directly in front of him.
They were so close he could see the Japanese pilot’s face, and their eyes
locked in that instant when they both reacted and peeled off to avoid a crash.
It
was a split-second reaction on both their parts. Only later did Dad fully admit
how close a call it had been. Pondering the significance of that encounter, he
had seen, instead of an enemy, a sort of
reflection of himself. I think in powerful, quiet moments as a pilot, Dad
shared another experience with the young poet: he did indeed discover
personally and reach out to touch the face of God.
But I knew little of those
things when I was young. I had no idea what war was or what my father had
accomplished as a fighter pilot and a flight instructor in the past. I only
knew that from the moment I was born, he was my home-front hero.
In addition to feeding me at
dinner, he helped me with dozens of routine daily tasks. He put my socks on me,
twisting the heel and toe sections to fit perfectly. He patiently found the
tiny holes in the ankle straps that buckled my white patent leather sandals. He
brushed my hair, and on hair-washing days, he painstakingly combed the tangles
out, always working from the bottom up. On a few occasions he tried his hand at
making my pin curls, though they were never as secure as when Mom did them.
He even trimmed my bangs once as an unsolicited favor to my mother. However, they turned out so uneven after whacking the whole handful of hair in one long sawing motion that he continued to trim in a persevering effort to get the buggers straight. Ultimately, where too-long bangs had been, only an inch of fringe remained, far above my eyebrows. Needless to say, he only did that little chore the one time!
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