I am my mother's daughter. This is not just an observation, a passing realization; this is an indisputable fact. My sister and I may be facsimiles, but we are also both miniature versions of my mother. We all ache for great literature, love a well-made salad and cannot get enough of Derek Morgan from "Criminal Minds."
But very often I feel I am leaving someone out with my harmonious trinity, someone who may not watch the same shows or read the same books, but someone who means the world nevertheless.\nDaddy. Daddy will be celebrating his 60th birthday in a couple of weeks. Six decades. More than half a century. What will I be able to say I've accomplished when I reach that age? What great strides will I have taken? Will my 20-year-old solipsistic self make that transition we all hope to make, from rootlessness to groundedness? I'm not sure. I am sure, though, that I will still be my mother's daughter. I am also certain that Daddy, steadfast, honest and good, will be present in everything that I do.
A lot of my friends don't know my dad. He isn't someone who is easy to know. When Daddy talks, I listen, not because I'm supposed to, but because I fear that if I don't open my ears immediately, whatever he has to say will be lost. As someone who cries about the perfect cadence of a last sentence, I have learned to appreciate words. And Daddy's few are precious.
My father is an artificer of the great story. He is not a reader or a writer or an artist - he is a scientist. A geologist to be exact. He feels about rocks and sand the way my mother and I feel about words and gourmet dining. Daddy does not write 900-word columns about his love of the earth; he does not give us speeches at dinner about how important the management of erosion is to the planet. Instead he tells us stories, stories from his 60 years, stories which take time and patience and a porch with a few dogs at your feet.
My favorite story of Daddy's is one that may never be told. I will attempt to scratch the surface now, but I will never do the protagonist justice.
My favorite story is the story of daddy's life, from his birth almost 60 years ago in Newport News, Va., to his current position, about 20 minutes away, in Gloucester, Va.
I cannot even enumerate all of the adventures my father has had. Daddy seems to have been everywhere and back, and yet I can't ever imagine him anywhere other than on his boat, in the bay, with a far-off gaze. Daddy has worked on sailboats in the Caribbean and has spent summers bell-hopping in New Jersey. He went to East Carolina University for undergrad and grad school because it was "just that fun." He has "lived" at a friend's house, under a dining room table. He has been to almost every tropical island to survey beaches and to instruct the natives which breakwaters would be most suitable for their brand of erosion. He's seen it all.
And yet. Daddy is a presence I so often take for granted because he is so sturdy, so constant, always there. He can casually tell me about "that one summer..." when he did something ridiculous or amazing, and yet the content of his story is not that which pleases me. It is the way in which Daddy structures his story, his life. Everything has happened this way and let's not think about it or analyze it let's just appreciate it for what it is. It's such a spectacular but simple notion. For Daddy, things just are. He is a father and a husband and a geologist, and he only asks that sometimes you come out and sit by the bonfire he makes, and maybe tell a few stories.
I know I will never be able to look at life the way Daddy looks at life. At the end of the day, we are very different creatures. But this is why I love him so much, why he is and always has been my hero. Daddy will never let me down. He may not understand all of
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