Dad

I’m the kind of girl who still calls her father “Daddy.”

Not in a got him wrapped around my little pinky kind of way. But just because it fits.

I miss my Dad. It’s hard being so far away. I could tell you in an instant what I miss most about my father because hardly a week goes by that I don’t think of it. I miss singing with my father. All of my favorite memories of my father involve singing. My father is undoubtedly to blame for my love of singing (I can blame Mom for the piano-playing, but Dad turned me into a choir junkie, for better or for worse).

When I was at that horrible difficult age, somewhere between being a kid and having adjusted to this teenager business, I was assigned to work the Sunday morning milking with my father. Sometimes I worked a Saturday afternoon milking instead – which was fun because then we listened to CBC radio together – but on Sunday mornings more often than not the radio was off and Dad would just sing. “My Wild Irish Rose” was a favorite, or “The Riddle Song”, or (because it made me laugh) “K-k-k-katie”. Dad was taking vocal lessons at the time, just to be a better singer, and after the vocal lessons he joined a barbershop chorus for a while. And there was the church choir we both belonged to. So there was always something to be singing.

Dad has a collection of hymnals and we’re both halfway decent sight-singers, with maybe a note here and there plunked out on the piano for reference. So when we’re together, we’ll pull out a book and flip through it until something strikes our fancy, and then we attempt to sing in harmony. I sing alto, and Dad sings bass, so we tend to switch off singing the melody so the other one can have fun with the harmony. When we were in the same choir together we often practiced just our harmony parts together, which sounds a bit weird sometimes without a melody part or accompaniment. But then when it was time to sing with the choir I would hear Dad’s bass from one corner of the choir loft and it would anchor me, give me that familiar counter-point to sing off, orient myself by.

I live on the nether side of the continent now, in a different country from my father, and I miss him. I miss his voice. I miss his company. I miss reading Robbie Burns or Robert Service at the dining room table and discussing theology or history over dinner. I miss singing with my Dad. I realize more and more as I move through the world how impressive my father’s example of faith – he was a convert to Catholicism – and steadfastness is. My dad’s life has been an example of the ordinary heroism of just waking up each morning and getting on with the business of working, doing what needs to be done, supporting your spouse and being present for your children. There are not a lot of accolades given out for mucking stalls or fixing tractors or singing old old songs with your daughter on a Sunday morning milking the cows.

Still, when I feel lost or just can’t quite remember why I signed up for this challenge of family life and faith, my father’s example, and his presence in my life from his corner of Ontario, is still a counterpoint that anchors me and keeps me on key.