My “Real” Dad

 Wilda Morris

 

 
Orville Leroy Kessler 1944

By Wilda Morris

My mother was divorced when I was two. All relationship was cut off between my birth parents. Mother and my sister Dorinda lived together with my grandparents in Iowa City. When Dorinda was in kindergarten, Mother was asked to go to New York to help out with the children of one of my aunts while she was expecting. That is where the first story takes place. My birth father returned, probably just wanting to see us, but his ill-advised way of doing it made it feel like a kidnap attempt. 

Meanwhile, Orville Leroy Kessler, was recruited into the army. He could have become a conscious objector, but a recruiter convinced him to become a non-combatant instead. As US soldiers fought their way from North Africa to the northern boarder of Italy, he cooked, aided the medics and performed other tasks important to the war effort. By the time I was in Junior High, he was a widower, moved back to Iowa, and joined our church. The rest, as they say, is history. He and Mother were married and (many years later) he adopted Dorinda and me. We never used the language of step-dad or step-daughter. Mother and Dad gave us a brother and two sisters. The language of half-siblings was never used - we were all just family. Eventually, we sealed it in court - Dad adopted us. We could not have wished for a better father!

The only one previously published is "Because Dad had Parkinson's." 
Encore: Prize Poems 2021 (National Federation of State Poetry Societies, 2021).


The Soldier

A young soldier in dress uniform 
walked down a street in Schenectady
in 1944. I suspect he was anticipating 
a date with his fiancé. He was handsome 
and he smiled when I waved at him. 
I don’t want to remember how I grabbed his arm
and dragged him to the door of my aunt’s house 
where we were visiting, but I do.
I clung so hard he couldn’t shake me off. 
My mother wants a soldier, I insisted.
I can’t forget my mother’s face,
startled and scarlet, as she said,
I’m so sorry. I don’t want to remember
the scolding I got when he was gone.
I imagine he laughed when he told
his girlfriend about the goofy
five-year-old down the block.
For years I imagined that if 
he hadn’t been engaged,
he would have fallen in love 
with mother and I would have had
a handsome soldier father.


Pieces

A piece of me still
wonders why Sis and I
let the neighbor boy
entice us to the corner
with the promise of a surprise.

I remember that man
luring us to come closer
and closer to his car
and told us he was our dad.
Sis took off toward home
like a startled rabbit,
leaving me a statue 
glued to the ground.

A piece of me does not
believe I was on her heels
as we flew through
the front door into Mother’s arms,
though that’s what 
I’ve been told over the years.

What I do know is this:
A piece of me still stands
at the corner of 8th and H Streets.
When the sun is setting
and the street light blinks on
you can see me there,
my face white, a wild look
in my eyes, my feet cemented
to the curb, my lips as mute
as they were that night
when I was eight.

 
Wilda’s parents on their 50th wedding anniversary


Because Dad Has Parkinson’s
With two lines from “Two Kinds of People”
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Because he has to get out of the car
to see the doctor, I get out of the back seat,
open his door, say, Here we are, Dad, 
in my cheeriest voice.

Because he smiles but doesn’t move,
I say, Dad, can you turn this way? 
I watch his slow pirouette, 
if I can use that word for a man 
in the passenger seat of a Toyota
turning his upper body more slowly
than a sloth, his knees barely bending
toward the door, his feet refusing to follow.

Because Dad can’t seem to lift his legs,
I ask if I can help move them. The master
of serving reluctantly agrees, lets me
lift what feels like trunks of ash trees.
My sister, the driver, appears with a walker 
as Dad’s feet fall to the pavement. 
It takes another six minutes 
to get Dad standing, another fifteen
to get to the office door.

Because over the years Dad gave rides to friends 
and cash to needy strangers, helped Aunt Grace
climb stairs, lifted children from his car 
to wheelchairs so they could attend Sunday School,
delivered casseroles and home-baked cookies,
carried my suitcases into the house
when I went home to visit, baked pies for Uncle Laird
and Aunt Ersel, stirred oatmeal, popped corn 
for a house full of offspring and friends, 
mopped floors at home and church, 
I suddenly recall two lines of the old poem 
Grandmother used to recite:
. . . the two kinds of people on earth I mean,
Are the people who lift and the people who lean,
and know Dad has earned the right to lean.


Losing Dad

The day my father died I tripped upon
a phone cord, smashed my head against the wall.
My sister dropped the phone and lost the call.
My brother, not content to just look on,
summoned a nurse to Mother’s room, face drawn,
expressed concern for me because my fall
was hard. It was not half the pain to sprawl
head bashed, as lose our father who was gone,
I thought, forever. Now I find each day
my dad shows up to give me good advice.
His shadow spreads across the greening yard;
his footprints firm still guide me on my way.
I see him in my brother’s smiling eyes.
Somehow I know he’s always standing guard.