Anniversary

I was so excited on the plane that I couldn’t eat anything. I drank some Sprite and tried to read a book called Pardon Me You’re Stepping on My Eyeball.

“Interesting title,” remarked the guy next to me.

“Yeah,” I said. I’d been told all my life not to talk to strangers, but this guy seemed ok.

“Is it your first time going to Atlanta?” he asked.

I nodded. “I’m visiting my dad. He’s gonna take me to see the Braves and we’re going to a mountain.”

“Stone Mountain?”

“I think so.”

“Oh, you’re going to have a great time!” He smiled and went back to his newspaper and I went back to my book. Soon it was time to fasten our seatbelts for landing and my stomach felt all fluttery. I hadn’t seen my dad in over a year. What if he didn’t recognize me anymore?

I had to wait until everyone else got off the plane before I was escorted off by a stewardess. I saw my big tall dad over everyone in the waiting area and he broke into a huge smile when he caught sight of us. He surprised me by grabbing me up into a big hug and carrying me in the airport. Apparently I didn’t look so different, because he didn’t seem to notice that I was now 11 and a little too old to be carried around. He put me down in the baggage claim area where we saw my seatmate from the plane.

“Your daughter is a very good traveler,” the guy told my dad, “She is very polite and sat and read her book through the whole flight A very nice girl.”

Well I certainly didn’t hear that about myself every day…

“Yes, she is,” my dad agreed. “And she always has a book with her!”

All this talk of me was overwhelming, so I was thrilled to see my bag and pointed it out to my dad so that we could be off. We walked out to the car and he said, “We are going to go somewhere really great this afternoon. I’m going to take you to get a $7 Coke. You won’t believe how good a $7 Coke tastes! We’re getting it in a place at the top of a building where you can see all of Atlanta. And the best part is….the room revolves. You're gonna see the whole city while you sit down and drink your $7 Coke.”

Thus began my love of revolving bars. Oh how I love them! I simply must go to a revolving bar in any city I visit. If it’s there, I’m there. But now I prefer sipping on a ridiculously expensive cocktail while I see the city from my lounge chair. And I have my dad to thank for this obsession of mine.

My dad died when I was 16. This week he will have been dead 16 years. At some time in the next year there will be a point when I will have been without a father for more of my life than I was with one. And then the gap will keep getting bigger. Does this even matter? It doesn’t seem like it should be so significant to me. But I keep thinking about him lately. Different memories of him have been coming up and catching me off guard. Not that it’s unpleasant…just unusual. I don’t often think about him, anymore. I know it’s the whole anniversary thing getting to me. He has even been in my dreams occasionally over the past few weeks. I wish he was telling me something profound in them but he’s not. He’s just there in the background. I don’t really even remember him well anymore. We weren’t so close, but our personalities were alike in a lot of ways. He was quiet and thoughtful, an introvert like me. I liked spending time with him as a kid because he never pressured me to talk when I just felt like being quiet. I felt like I could be myself with my dad.

But he was a sad soul. He’d had a lot of loss in his life. Both of his parents and a brother had died before he was in his mid-twenties. He often said he didn’t want to live a long life and he made choices that ensured that he didn’t. And for sixteen years I have been angry about that. Angry at him for giving up on himself and his kids and not fighting harder. It’s not an active anger and it’s rarely on the surface. It’s been such a long time. Yet there are still times when I’ve felt his loss acutely and for me it’s grief tinged with rage. The stupidest things bring it up. Irish bars, Bruce Springsteen, the fourth of July with the fireworks and cheesy patriotic music that he loved, and every fatherless daughter’s favorite: the part of weddings where the father and daughter dance. Even when I know the pair aren’t close and they’re doing this because it’s tradition and expected, I still have to walk away. It’s so corny and stupid…it just bugs the hell out of me that it still gets to me, but what can you do? Take advantage of the open bar and wait a while, ‘cause soon it will be time for the less emotionally charged chicken dance!

I would like to mark this anniversary by letting go of some the anger I’ve had around my father’s death. Now that I’m an adult I have had some losses and painful times of my own and I am no longer so self-righteous and judgmental about him and his choices. I’ve been lucky in that I’ve somehow learned how to pick myself up when I fall. I seem to have a great will to survive and I am thankful for that. I no longer blame my dad for cutting out, but I still can’t help but wish he’d found another way out of his pain. I guess that’s the best I can do for now.
-Gigi 06.14.04