Super-sized Series

 Daddies and Daughters 

 

Jayne Jaudon Ferrer as a child with her father and sister nine years older than her.

 Losing Papa by Jayne Jaudon Ferrer

Dear God, I hurt so much.
I’ve lost my daddy,
the man who tossed me into the air,
rode me in his Jeep,
chased away the ghosts,
snuggled me into bed,
did everything Mama did—
just a little bit bigger.
But if he was a hero to me at thirty,
what must he have been to my son?
Papa’s been there every day
of his short, simple life,
for bear hugs and bug hunts,
fishing trips and baseball games,
and two cookies 
every time Mommy and Grandma said,
“One!”
How do I tell him, Lord?
What sense does death make to a child?
Will he think I’m leaving him next?
Will he fear sharing love anymore?
Please help me ease his confusion.
Help him know that, while Papa’s body is gone,
his spirit will live forever,
his to cherish and learn from for life.
And, Father, most importantly,
help us know Papa lives on in us. 

 

From A New Mother’s Prayers   

 

 

Joan Leotta at six with her father, Gabriel DiLeonardo

 

Shells of the Summer of ‘62

By Joan Leotta

The soft ripple of low tide
rolled in to chill our toes.
Dad said the damp sand
was good for walking.
He pulled up the collar of my jacket.
Wind was pushing dark clouds our way.
There’d be no afternoon of sun and sandcastles.
We hopped over lines of soft white foam
zigzagging across the strip of brown sand
between our place and the ocean.
Gulls screeched, “Go back!”
I never looked up. My eyes were set
to hunt treasures in dawn’s tide.
At last I spotted something!
An orange fan! A perfect scallop shell!
Surf crashed with sudden interest in my search.
Foam fingers fastened on my prize,
pulling it back out into the ocean.
“Dad!”

Without even rolling up his pants,
he chased the wave back out toward the rocks.
He bent over and put down his hand.
Another wave swelled up.
“Dad, look out!”
In another second he was completely soaked.
But he had my shell.
I have it still.

From Languid Lusciousness with Lemons   

 

 

 

 Robert Hyatt, Shelly Blankman/s father

 

Daddy’s Girl by Shelly Blankman

I was a Daddy’s girl from the time I could talk
until the day he died. He was my hero, my world
My sister and brother traveled in another orbit, 
filled with neighborhood kids and their dads 
playing Greek dodge until dark, laughing and
cheering each other on until dusk and dinner.

Our world was quieter. My dad knew what it was
like to be me. My dad had a bad heart his entire
life. Too sick and short to play football, he was water
boy for the team, handing out towels and water to
players and tolerating taunts from all the tall athletes. 

I had a birth defect that left me with a big head,
poor balance, and other problems. In gym class,
I sat on the cold floor, sometimes playing the maracas
while all the girls square-danced or line-danced. My
only exercise was biting my nails until they bled.
I could feel the stares and snickering. 

Classrooms and hallways were no better. I was teased,
tripped, mocked and pranked. I always swallowed my
tears until I got home. I’d retreat to my bedroom while
Mom stayed downstairs washing dishes, as if washing
away her own tears of guilt for giving birth to a sick child
and not knowing to handle my pain — or hers. When Dad
came home, he’d listen to my tears. 

As others were tearing me down, Dad would construct
my confidence, layer by layer. The screeching joy outside
that had always torn my soul now was just background
noise as he’d teach me how to draw with charcoal and pens.
No fancy pens and pencils back then. He tapped into his
sheer talent, teaching me perspective, proportion,
and patience. Over time, the chaotic noise of joy 
outside was just a murmur.

That special feeling of having him as the hero in my life has
never faded. He taught me how to stand up for myself and
to stand up for others. He taught me how to ignore the 
ignorant. His hearty laugh still echoes when I think about
him. His gentle tone still reverberates. And although he’s
been gone for years, I pray to him when I need help and 
thank him afterwards for listening. After all, I’m still a
Daddy’s girl. I wish I’d told him. He would have liked that.

 

 Sharon Waller Knutson left and Judith Waller Carroll with their father and mother.

My Father’s Blue Sweater by Judith Waller Carroll

He hasn’t been alive for over twenty years
but suddenly, here he is in this room,
smelling of Marlboros and mints,
wearing that blue cardigan,
faded and soft, slightly frayed at the cuffs,
the one I brought home after his funeral
and wore for weeks without washing,
not wanting to lose the scent.
He is reeled back on his heels
reciting Emerson by heart,
dark eyes wide, unruly eyebrows raised,
long fingers outstretched, smoothing the air.

From What you Saw and Still Remember  

 

Waldo Emerson Waller in his blue sweater with his grandson, Justin Carroll-Allan. 

 

Heir to the Throne by Sharon Waller Knutson

Just as my father is getting ready
to check out of Hotel Earth,
my nephew swims through my sister’s
birth canal and when the two sets
of piercing black eyes and bald heads

meet they smile as if gazing
into a mirror. When my father takes
a bow and exits the stage,
his grandson takes up his passion
for cooking and reading and writing.

I see my father’s smiling eyes 
and hear his laughter as I watch
my nephew receive his diploma
in English and recite the works
of Steinbeck, Hemingway and Poe

to a classroom full of students
who find him humorous and brilliant
and writing short stories in his office
while his wife and children sleep
just like his grandfather, my father.

And now on my nephew’s 39th birthday 
I watch my father ‘s tall slim body bend
over the backyard grill as his grandson
flips sirloin steaks in the sunlight
and serves them on paper plates

with the grace of his grandfather
who is somewhere grilling steaks
and teaching grammar content
his grandson is carrying on
in the kingdom he built for him.

From My Grandfather is a Cowboy  

 

 

 

Laurie Byro and her father Paul Lampe

 Porch Birds by Laurie Byro

“or draw a heart and our initials. I promised
when I was older I’d steal away with him to Mexico."

from Salt


I knew I would need to remember his voice
for a long time. He kept himself like himself the longest

on the porch, an old man used to work and not rest,
unsure of what he was supposed to do with his hands.

He reigned over the quick bright birds greedy for red sugar
water, studied them like a career, get up early dressing

in the dark, try to catch them asleep in their cocoons
of light. His hands would tremble, helpless to explain

how small they were, these noble bursts of fire. How ready
they are to leave this place and hitchhike to Mexico, he’d say,

make light travel on the back of some dull bird. Dad, I’d say,
you don’t believe that? When you get to be my age, he’d answer

You can believe almost anything. He’d look into the shadowy yard,
beyond the reach of his tired eyes.  Anything that makes

it easier to not miss company when you know it’s time
for you to go, to hurry out into sunshine to a different place.

 

 Lynn White with her father’s trousers

 

I Remember My Father by Lynn White


I remember my father.
Remember being carried high 
on his shoulders when
he was walking into town.
I remember that I was scared.
I had never been carried
on shoulders before.
Was there a bus strike
or no money for the fare?
That I don’t remember.

I remember my father
sitting in a chair, a passenger
on a bus or tram,
as I collected his fare
and gave him a ticket.
He drove trams once
and then later he cleaned them.

I remember my father.
Remember sitting on his knee
looking at Rupert Bear books.
I knew the stories by heart
so people thought I could read
and were very impressed.
But I could only remember.

I remember my father.
I don’t need photographs
to jog my memory,
which is just as well
since there are none,
None of him whole, anyway, 
just one of his legs
in loose grey trousers,
sitting by me as I planted seeds
in my first garden.

First published in Pilcrow and Dagger 

 

Hellmuth Böhm

A Memory by Rose Mary Boehm

The way my father stood
by the evening sun-lit window, a golden halo
playing around his hair
and how he would look
so quietly out of the window, blinking
into those slanted rays of burnt orange.
 
His thumb in his waistcoat pocket,
his watch chain performing
the perfect shape, just as watch chains
hanging from waistcoat pockets
should. Rather than seeing it then,
I knew that on the left side
of my father’s nose
there was a fleshy mound—not too big.
I would always recognize
my father’s nose.
 
I couldn’t see that either,
but I knew my father’s hat
hung on the stand-up wardrobe
in the hall, the one with the big mirror
and the large hooks made from a copper alloy,
doubled so as not to damage the clothes. I was tracing
the raised flower pattern on the wallpaper.
 
The evening sun slants across my desk
and makes it difficult to see
the computer screen. My eyes
are wet. The insistent phone calls me.

from LIFE STUFF

 

 

 

 Rachael Ikins with her father and baby cousin

By Hand by Rachael Ikins 

My newborn hand wrapped 
a poem, my father’s thumb. 
My father’s hands patting stanzas 
over my bare shoulder, good night.

My father’s hands massaged a 12-year-old’s jaw, 
dislocated by braces. 

My father’s poem wrapped around a kitten, 
lines scribbled rough like a mother’s tongue.
Purring.

The poem in my father’s hands cups a hamster, 
blowing into its mouth hoped-for resuscitation 

My father revising, hands stirring pancake batter,
spoon chuff-chuff against the bowl, 

cutting metal sutures from my dog’s belly, 
words, letters, flour littered the kitchen floor.

My father’s hands with ears to hear.

He knelt that snow-spit March afternoon, 
bare hands screwed the license plates on 
my new car in work’s parking lot. 

Wind tossed his hair.
I’d never noticed the thinning 
spot on the top of his head.

April, my hands clutch a plain white box. 
Cemetery, back hoe under a spruce tree. 
Box no heavier 
than a bird. 

I grip tighter, my chest, 
heartbeats speak to his broken.
One more unrhymed line 
flutters against my ribs.

From when he brought 
poem after poem  
in boxes shaped as books, 

when a six year old read to a man 
whose damaged brain  
would not/could not leave 
poetry locked 

inside his father’s beatings, 
hard hand clipping a boy’s softness, 
broken ankle left to heal on its own,
no dinner but gizzards and necks.

giblets my mother used 
to simmer 
for the cats,
minced fine with 
kibble where they ate
on the windowsill, 

tails swishing 
at the robin perched 
in the crabapple tree 
singing the sunset
down

Judy Lorenzen’s son Job and his daughter Ali

Daddy’s Little Girl by Judy Lorenzen

A baby changes everything,
and she changed his life. . . forever.
He didn’t know
how much he could love her,
until the day she was born,
and he didn’t know that love
expands and grows and takes over
a life completely, but he learned that it did—
that love is a little girl
with big brown eyes
and a heart just for him.
And he didn’t know
that when she was four months old,
he'd be told
he had two years to live,
and he didn’t know
he'd look at her differently then,
like he’d never get enough time to love her.
And as a baby, she didn’t know
the huge fear that hung over her daddy’s head,
but she always knew she was daddy’s little girl.
So, he held her each night and rocked her to sleep.
When she was big enough,
she waited at the door for him every day to get home.
He'd put her in her little red wagon
and pull her around the block.
He'd make her, her favorite supper,
mash potatoes and roast.
He took her to Grandpa’s farm
so she’d know where he grew up.
Her showed her his old fort in the trees
and taught her about the animals.
He took her to the county fair
so she could ride the merry-go-round
and rode with her.
And when she was two,
she didn’t know her daddy was told
he had four to nine months to live.
There were so many things
she didn’t know,
but she knew she was Daddy’s little girl,
and he knew she was Daddy’s little girl.
She didn’t know why suddenly
he was gone for two or three days at a time,
and why sometimes he couldn’t hold her
or be around her for 24 hours when he got home,
but she always knew that he loved her.
After a couple years, he took her to a big clinic
for a big celebration, and she had so much fun
because people were celebrating her dad,
wearing hats, clapping their hands, taking pictures!
And then one day, she got to be in a commercial—
about her dad!
And their lives and love went on,
and one day, when she was eight years old,
she got to watch the commercial and understood
and cried,
and loved him even more.
But that was all when she was Daddy’s little girl—
now she’s Daddy’s big girl, thirteen years old,
and he goes to her basketball games and yells for her,
talks to her about the important things in life,
faith and not giving up,
takes her to Tim McGraw and Hardy concerts,
and loves her more than anything in life
because even though she’s growing up,
she’s still Daddy’s little girl,
and he's so grateful.