A Place in His World

You know I don’t need this now. Really, the timing is just awful.

Calling Dad, calling Dad, can you read me from outer space? This is your daughter, beaming in from the very distant extensions of the Milky Way. Let’s try this again—please: CAN YOU READ ME—OVER!!!

This is just not working. And the constellations are colliding like mad this afternoon.

Follow along and eventually you’ll get this, and if you do, I’d really, really appreciate a lesson. So, you’re confused, like totally messed up by now? Take a freaking bow, whoever you are, for you are doing a heck of a lot better than me!

Fine, I’m not helping. I get that all the time. Do me a favor, ok? Don’t use that T word with me, yeah, the one about that age all through high school. And the generation label—the word starting with M with two Ls in the middle—seriously, you’re not bored out of your mind using that cliché every other second when you even glance at me or near me? The middle name ain’t Stupid, although I’m tempted to check your birth certificate for yours.

Let’s try this again, starting with another interplanetary communication to my father. Don’t worry out there, a rerun of The Waltons (who watches that thing, anyway) is not coming anytime soon so I’ll spare you the man’s 2000 B.C. memoirs.

About Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and all those rocks colliding at this place and time. Have you even bothered looking at my desk in my room? Ok, it’s usually none of your dang business what winds up there. There you go again, this has nothing—nothing—to do with prom night or him or him or him. Heck, be that way, why don’t you, keep adding “or him” as many times as you want!

Does anyone see the letter there?

Oh, you have such potential, don’t you—yes, it’s the one opened now, with the college envelope and letterhead. Don’t worry about being impolite, the hyper-meltdown is well underway.

You see it is thin and only one page. You know and I know what thin and one page mean in this business. And yeah, it is none of your business, but now it’s official and on the school bus and in the high school hallways, and the entire freaking world out there is about to learn this:

My T, M, Ls in the middle universe has gone from second choice “get real” to third choice “deal with it” come this fall. It’s the end of May now. Options are practically gone now. No, don’t you dare go there you moron, and give me the “poor baby, she’s off to Princeton instead of Harvard or Yale” speech.

Did you come prepared with the standard “regional state school an hour away on a full ride versus our flagship colleges” oration? Does it even occur to any of you that early decision for a high grades, low test scores false genius was a totally embarrassing joke for me from the beginning at “those top schools”?

No-o-o, dummy, because they don’t write that speech for girls like me! The university guides can’t equip yours truly with responses to those looks of false pity in line for a latte on the way to homeroom. Do you think I don’t know the high scores, low grades classmates all around me are completely enjoying this? Yes, sir, yes, ma’am, I realize very well any of those words out of my mouth will get me kicked out of PC World at the amusement park this summer. Don’t try it, you are w-r-o-n-g again, some of my friends and four-year varsity teammates have skin and perspectives and opinions way different from mine.

All this—all of it—and mission control has yet to contact my father. Are you the one consoling me at the speed of light and that it won’t be much longer? What part of SHUT UP! don’t you get?

Or maybe it’s this part that I refuse to get?

It is a late afternoon late in May and the school calendar is too late for any more organized activities. It’s actually and completely weird as anything to be home from school at a quarter to five, even with a 3:15 dismissal beamed in my brain these past four years followed by soccer, forensics, jazz band, whatever. As I sit and sulk with whomever you are in a room with the door kinda open and kinda closed, barbeque smoke and scents rise up from the back yard. In the front hallway heading my way, I hear him singing to himself.

This is not like a father to me—does the galactic universe part of this make sense by now? Saddle up, for it’s about to get much worse!

A bronze star test scores daughter with gold medal scholastic credentials is hearing her Daddy sing lyrics like this: “The wind is moving, but I am standing still. A life of pages waiting to be filled.”

Time check, please.

Remind me who has the DOB ending with 1967, and kindly identify the human being holding the 2004 YYYY. Good! Now that we got something about this universe straight, why is he talking about empty pieces of paper and I’m sounding like the ending credits are running on my movie after we all see the big, bold THE END up on the screen!

You tell me: Can a third-place daughter win at a first-place life?

And now that my father—yeah, Daddy, that guy—is suddenly shopping for skin- tight ripped jeans (hilarious, right) for his American Idol audition, and the lyrics get lamer by the millisecond, what’s the point! What is it? There are no dots to connect where there is no justice, so there is no attempt to comprehend this further nonsense: “I’m looking for a reason, roaming through the night to find my place in this world, my place in this world.”

I personally am…waiting for the knocking, listening for my dad to come to my door, to come…okay, fine, it’s not a good time for musical parodies or Grammy award-losing, smart-mouth nonsense.

“Sweetheart, how are you, today?” I’ve heard that question from four years old on. Until age nine or so, it brought a beaming grin to my face, surrounded as I was by two older brothers now off to their (loud cough, please) first choice private universities. At ten through fourteenish, the Daddy question could bring a maybe yes, maybe no answer from me, but I always let all of his broad-shouldered, five foot eleven, 310 pound frame in the room to talk about at least something.

Fifteen and above has been different, though, and I know he stayed with the nightly queries through laughs and pouts and way, way too many slammed doors—in his face, no less. I was a late birthday girl (missed the September 1 deadline for kindergarten by four months, I was so weird), so age 18 and senior year came just recently to our place in this world.

Can you stay with me on this one? My old father is singing a young kid’s song from Benny Goodman’s day and age (pre-Adele, who really cares when it was recorded, anyway). Here I am, getting totally synched up to apply for my AARP card thirty-two years in advance---the script’s already written, so what’s the point in trying—and if I saw grey hairs in my mirror, I might say to my genes, “What took you so darn long?”

But I have another question at the door to answer now.

Crud, what will he say when he finds out? Brother One just made Dean’s List for the sixth consecutive semester and is being assigned a Rhodes Scholar application faculty adviser. What can I say, people? Important people get to hang out with…important people. And Bro Numero Dos can hang his hat on a first team lacrosse selection in his Division I conference as a freshman, no less. Did you actually think for a minute it was Division II or III or—heaven forbid—NAIA?

As he finally approached my door a minute ago, the timing got much too ridiculous for words. Within moments of his knocking, the absurdity reached rock bottom. Was I hearing my own father saying and singing, “Among the many, can you still hear me? Hear me asking, where do I belong?”

“Oh, Hi, Daddy, come in.” It had been a stupidly, stupendously long college application cycle reaching from last summer’s campus visits to this last, thin, it’s over letter. Little did I know that his hazel eyes piercing as ever saw the notification on my desk and the tears on my face.

“So, sweetheart, is that it? You know where you will be in August? And I can write the deposit check and…”

I couldn’t help it, what would you say if you were that little girl?

“And, Dad, your youngest one will not have the life of your older two. To heck with the efforts, throw out the unfairness, four years got me this! Only this, Dad!”

He wouldn’t blame me if I shoved him out and another door was slammed. He wasn’t going to let that happen. You’ll see (well, maybe you already did) that in the midst of hearing his approach in the hallway, his stage audition for America Lacks Talent also included this sung question, perhaps ignored, perhaps lacking understanding: “Is there a vision that I can call my own? Show me.”

“Sweetheart, look. I was preparing for either decision from that place. Now we all dream big, you, me, both of your brothers. And when you applied early decision at your top choice, I warned you about the thousands of kids that think just like you. Don’t believe, please don’t, that I do not understand what this last letter means, and how hard this wait has been for you.

“You know, little one, the mystery of these ways is so very difficult to understand sometimes. And for me, today was a day very much like yours, can you believe that?”

I really couldn’t (Surprise!) but since the story of my life was already published, what the hell? Besides, Daddy’s face looked more and more like mine with every second he spent in my room, and I knew Mom could handle the grill outside by herself. Don’t ever tell my father, but her burgers were always better than his, and that was an argument he hadn’t won since I entered seventh grade and Mom saw me and my twelve year-old friends laugh their (you knew it was coming) buns off!

“Really, Dad? What happened?”

“Well, sweetheart, I hope you will never, ever see this day in your life or work or family. I guess it will be tough for you to understand. Don’t get me wrong, I’m crying with you after this college news, but this is best, if only for now--how do I say this? Oh, I’ll just say it: The Friday before Memorial Day—next Friday—is my last day at work.”

“Dad, come on, this means even my third choice isn’t possible at all now…”

“…Sweetheart, stop--we will make this work, this will be my gift of love to my baby girl. In your small world, the idea of transferring schools later is too much to think about now, but don’t discount it….”

“…Dad, I asked you, answer me, please—what happened!”

Every concept of bad news and every forlorn attempt to sing prehistoric melodies was about to get blown out of the water by my very own father.

“Sweetheart, I may be facing early retirement. This allows me to hold onto health insurance for you and Mom and your brothers, that keeps you kids protected until you’re 26. If I didn’t leave on my own, I could find myself out of both a job and health care.”

“Daddy, you have been with them since I was too young to remember. How could this be?”

“Let me try to help you understand. Do you know what happens when someone or some group sets you up to fail?”

My dear, dear Daddy—let me count the ways! But I’ll let him keep talking.

“Sweetheart, rules of performance were set. They could be taken literally to set up someone, and everything else that is positive shoved to the side. But rules are documented, and other’s impressions are not. Those same rules could be just guides, with everything else looked at to gain a wider picture. You saw all the people who respected your father when you met them at my employee picnic, didn’t you?”

“I remember, Dad.”

“What can I tell you? There was one person not there who would not respect me, never in a million years, and he followed the rules literally, and he was the one who signed my performance appraisal.”

“And he was your new supervisor, right, Dad?”

“That’s right, sweetheart. And I had a decision to make, just as you do for your own future: Let him set me up to fail, or else choose to succeed elsewhere.”

“That is so ridiculous, Dad, but what is really dorked out are your singing talents!”

“My singing talents! I’ve seen your music and dancing videos on your cell phone since middle school, young lady, and you’re calling me a dork!” I never qualified for the Ms. Inspirational award, but I got my father laughing his buns off, and I think both of us could use a good hoot today.

“Ah, about those talents, Dad…” The song of the day was about to get a review, and I was wondering how my father was going to handle this one. “Just what were you singing out in the hall?”

“Oh, sweetheart, that song, you know it was really popular when I was a young guy and they played it on Top 40 radio.”

“You mean before Fred met Wilma, and you and him and Barney got plastered at Bedrock U’s frat parties?”

“No, my dear smart mouth daughter, it was when I was twenty-five before I met your mother. I was groveling through my resentment today when its lyrics came back to me, can I serenade my little girl some more?”

Can you see, and can you feel my eyes roll ever so suddenly to the top of my head? “Oh sure, Dad, you know I just love a great song when I hear it!”

And can you now see steam rise from above my father’s head and sarcasm burst forth from his grin as he finished his tune with, “Not a lot to lean on, I need your light to help me find my place in this world, my place in this world.”

Daddy wasn’t finished with his youngest child, oh no! “Sweetheart, you’ve got your laptop there, right? Plug ‘Place In This World’ in the search box and follow along with the video.

I gotta be honest, the thought of Dino, Pebbles, and Bam-Bam highlighting a music video didn’t appeal to me at all. But once I got over the 90’s mullet and listened, I, too, began to wonder if there was a creator who could “Hear me asking where do I belong?”

After my bad news, and Dad’s far worse news, though, these words were a total stretch of the imagination: “Is there a vision that I can call my own?”

“Dad, really? There is nothing, nothing original in what I see coming. I get it that my brothers and I are achieving and accomplishing far different things. But what can possibly matter to anyone in my life that is coming?”

“Sweetheart, do you see what is wrong with a life only defined by words like achieve and accomplish? I won’t pretend every lesson in life is learned in a song’s lyrics, and perhaps all these years you thought your brothers mattered and you didn’t. Never, no, not ever!

“And would you believe this as well: When I was that young guy at Bedrock U. and I wasn’t hanging out with Fred and Barney way back when, my dad—your grandfather—believed what you do? That nothing mattered unless it was an achievement or an accomplishment? And I had no brothers or sisters to lean on. I grew up with a two-word life, and sweetheart, I absolutely hated it!

“Now before I let all of this get the best of me—and since your Mom’s better burgers are way better than mine—do you have time for another song before dinner?”

Oh, certainly Dad, if I go hungry until the Flintstones and Rubbles rise from their primeval graves, it’s just another day between a father and daughter, yeah right. What will it be this time, that EDM fave Me and You Do the Yabba Dabba Do!

Not quite.

This time, our list of links took us to The Greatest Man I Never Knew, and three minutes of listening later, I could understand how much a life of only achieve and accomplish, and then deeply hurt by being set up to fail at the end of it all, brought my Daddy to my bedroom door and to his very knees this late spring day.

Mom wasn’t about to let her backyard cuisine get cold, and perhaps she already knew what her husband of over twenty years was now feeling. What was it like to meet her future father-in-law for the first time? Dad was not yet done, though, and he wasn’t going to let an only daughter teaching moment pass by for another eighteen years.

“My sweetheart, do you see the difference between the first song we played and the second? I could do nothing about a childhood like the second song. But I really, truly hope for you and all you kids, that I defined you like the first song.

“That’s not enough, though, not if your father isn’t a good example as well. That first song can be mine, too, and yours if you choose it. You were not created to be anybody’s third choice. We are all first choice, and all here for a reason. Very soon, your two brothers, my two sons, will think they have to settle for third-choice graduate schools, or employers, or cities where they’ll eventually live. But anything in life can be elevated to first-choice potential.

“You know what, your Daddy is hungry, too. But there is a question I’m wondering about from that daughter of mine: Will your life be a song of hurt, or will it be a song of hope? And what about that father of yours, the very same question also applies to me, young lady! So, what will it be?”

I was stumped, I truly was.

With my brothers gone, every day was a dinner buffet around here. Yet as I was looking for a pickle and roaming through the relish not needing to find my place at the picnic table, I did know that a place in his world was never in doubt among so many ashes of the word “No” that I thought were mine forever.