A Daughters Love….cont 3

I’ve always heard people say things like “Oh, if I had a choice I wouldn’t have picked him..”  There was a time that I thought that of Dad.  I’m not sure how it happened or what caused it to happen but a certain peace just come over me.  Over us really.  I’m not talking dirty hippy loving, everyone love each other, grin like dopes type of peace.  The type of peace that comes with your own maturity and that of the other person.  Weird to think that a grown man wouldn’t already be mature but he wasn’t.  How can someone be mature when they have spent most of their life an alcoholic hiding from their emotions?  That’s what I believe all true alcoholics to be.  People that just hide.  I say true alcoholic because you have your functioning alcoholics as well.  Those are the people that can continue to go on with their daily lives and they come home each evening to get snockered.  I could be right, I could be wrong.  But it’s how my mind has always made sense of it all.

Looking back now I realize that while I had already grown up his mind still thought of me as the child he remembered before he pickled his brain for nineteen years.  So, we went through all the stages of growing up and letting your children go.  He was over protective.  We talked every day.  Sometimes more than once a day.  If I didn’t call him and was out and about he would call my house until I got home and then snippily tell me I didn’t tell him I was going to be out so late.  He finally purchased a cell phone and gave it to me.  He said it was because he was worried that I’d get stranded somewhere with the kids and have to walk for help.  Yet I racked up more minutes on our mobile to mobile plan with him than anyone else.  We met for lunch we met for dinner.  He brought me groceries when I was so sick with the flu I could barely stand up.  Granted he left the bags by the door and then called to tell me they were on the mat from the safety of his car.  But still, he felt a need to feed me.  He would call with every snow storm to be sure I had everything I needed.  He would call in the middle of snow storms to check to see if we still had electric, remind me to use the cell if our power went out and to have him come get us, make sure I had milk/diapers/formula enough for the boys to last until the plows hit.  He drove me to OB appointments.  He went back and forth to the hospital with two of my births and was there each time I woke up from the anesthetic.  When I lost my third child late in pregnancy he was five states away and started packing up his RV while I was on the phone with him so he could be there for me.

He was the Dad I had always wanted.  The one I had wished for when I would glare at him drinking and stumbling about the house.  It didn’t matter that he was on backorder for nineteen years.  I realized that had I had what I wanted from the beginning that I would have taken it for granted.  That it was so much more special to me because I could appreciate it and cherish it now.  There were no more regrets for what I had missed when each day, even when I wanted to tear my hair out because he was acting like an ass, I knew all I had to do was call to hear his voice.