LJ Idol Survivor: Final Immunity Challenge, Day 6

[flipflop_diva]

Growing up, I wasn’t very close to my dad. He was a good dad, and he loved my sister and me greatly, and we loved him, too, but we weren’t really close.

A lot of it was that he just wasn’t around very much. He worked really hard, and when he would come home at night, we’d eat dinner together as a family, and then he would retire to the family room to lay back in his recliner and watch TV. Sometimes it was shows we could watch together. Sometimes, it wasn’t, and my sister and I would watch our shows on the TV in a different room.

On weekends, he liked to watch football or baseball or NASCAR and drink a beer or two and smoke his pipe. My sister and I hated sports back then, so we spent our time playing with the other kids in the neighborhood or with our dog.

My dad also traveled a lot for work. Back then, he helped design training equipment for the military, so he was always off to some military base or another — in the U.S. and around the world — to help train troops on how to use it. Sometimes he was gone for a few days here or there. Other times, he was gone for months.

I used to have a drawer in my dresser full of T-shirts my dad brought me back from every country or state he had traveled to. I also had a book full of postcards he would send, most of them saying something like “Sorry, I missed your first day of school again.”

When I played basketball in middle school, he missed almost all of my competitions because he was traveling. When I was on the colorguard team in high school, it was the same thing.

He did go to the things he could, and he never missed the really important stuff. He was there for prom and for graduations, and he was always home for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

He took us on vacation every summer, and when we got older, he used his many, many, many frequent flier miles to upgrade us all to First Class.

My sister and I used to think his life was so glamourous — traveling to all these countries, getting to stay in nice hotels and flying in the front of the plane. We didn’t understand how much he sacrificed for his job, for his family, so my mom could work part time and stay at home with us, so we could do the extra-curricular activities we wanted to do, so he could take us places he wanted us to see.

He used to tell us it wasn’t that great, but we thought he just didn’t want to tell us the truth.

Things began to change between my dad and me the summer after my freshman year of college. The school I picked was a small institution up in Oregon, about 1,500 miles away from where we lived.

It wasn’t a bad drive, but it was a long drive, and I didn’t have a car my freshmen year. So my dad drove fifteen hours up to Oregon to help me pack my stuff and pack the car the day after school let out, and then we drove fifteen hours back home together.

It was the first time I had been alone with my dad for anything close to that length of time. It was the first time I really had a chance to talk to him since I left for college, apart from winter break. During the school year, my mom would call me every Saturday morning without fail. Sometimes my dad would get on the line for a minute or two to say hello, but I mostly talked to my mom. But now I had to spend a 15-hour car ride with just him, without my mom who was usually the one I told everything to.

I worried it would be weird, that we wouldn’t have anything to talk about, that we would just sit in awkward silence.

Instead, we actually talked — about college for me, about his job, about my mom and my sister. It was nice, and the moments we didn’t talk, the ones where we just listened to the huge collection of CDs I had along for the ride, felt comfortable, normal, safe.

Three months later, he drove me back to school, and it was the same way.

During the school year, I mostly just talked to my mom, but each time school ended or it began, my dad was the one who drove up to get me, and in a way, I looked forward to those long drives and spending time with him.

I knew we would never be as close as my mom and me, but what we had was nice, and I liked it.

Three years after I graduated from college, my mom passed away, and with her went the one person in my family I was really close to. I worried what would happen after her memorial, when my dad, my sister and I all went our separate ways, all of us back to our own lives.

The first Saturday I was back in my apartment in Central California, about a five-hour drive from my dad, my phone rang at 11 a.m. sharp. It was my dad.

“Hello,” I said, answering the phone.

“This is what time your mom always called, right?” my dad said.

“Yes, it is,” I answered.

“Okay,” he said. “How are you?”

We talked that Saturday morning. The next Saturday, he called again at 11 a.m. And the Saturday after that the same thing. Twenty years later and my dad still calls me every Saturday at 11 a.m.

Sometimes we talk for maybe five minutes. Sometimes it’s almost an hour. But every week I look forward to those calls, and I think he does too.

We might not have been close when I was young, but we’re doing just fine now.

(Fourteen years ago, I also got a job where I travel for work, and I finally understood why my dad said it wasn’t as great as it sounds. But that is another story for another day.)




Non-fiction


My dad with Ellie, a couple days after she was born. I really need to organize my photos better since I have a million with me and my dad, but of course I can't find them right now, so this is what you get!




Thank you for reading! This was written for therealljidol: Survivor Idol! We're at the final immunity challenge now, so there's no voting. We just write an entry every day until only one person is left standing.

That said, if you want to read the entries, you can find them all here.

Comments

[murielle]

I have tears in my eyes and I'm all choked-up reading about how your dad built his relationship with you. It is so hard for parents to always be there when we need them or think they should be, but your father really went the extra mile to make sure you and he have a very special relationship. Bless him!

What a lovely tribute to a father's love. Well done!

[gunwithoutmusic]

Oh my God! I teared up a little when you described that first phone call from him. How sweet and thoughtful. :) My relationship with my own dad is kinda the same; we've never had a "bad" relationship, but I've always been a momma's boy. It's gotten better as I've gotten older, though. Somehow he seems easier to talk to than he did when I was a kid. I'm glad your relationship with your dad has gotten better, too. :)

[bleodswean]

Okay, you made me cry. I might even be weeping. Thank you for sharing this. What a gift you have in your father.

[alycewilson]

I love how you relate the way you grew closer as you got older, and how sweet that he picked up tour Mom's tradition!

[halfshellvenus]

You are so lucky to have improved your relationship with your Dad to this point. That's just wonderful!

My relationship with my Dad was similar growing up, though he didn't travel for work like yours did. But I'm about 15 years older than you, and I think my Dad's behavior was _more_ involved for that era than most, even though it wasn't extensive. Both my parents worked full-time, but my Mom definitely had the 'second shift' of making dinner and tending to the kids's needs.

How great that you and your Dad grew into openness during the drive to/from college, and that he took up your Mom's habit of making those weekly phone calls!

I'm trying to figure out approximately which college you might have gone to in Oregon, and I'm only coming up with things like SOSC or maybe Willamette (though that seems to far North). We've driven both down to LA and up to Eugene many times, so I know that from Sacramento to LA is about 7-8 hours, and from Sacramento to Eugene is 7 1/2 to 8. That would seem to put your college no farther North than Eugene or Corvallis, but the U of O (my alma mater) and OSU are the two MAIN colleges for the state, so they don't seem like 'small' ones to me. :)