Dear Dad,

In November of 1998, your hands were frail, paper thin skin drawn tight over swollen knuckles. You had liver spots, although you were only sixty-eight, not old by today's standards. Old is eighty-something. Old is for other people.

That day, you struggled to breathe and disdained the oxygen the doc wanted you to use full time, but smoking a pack a day for forty years had finally caught up to you. You thought because you'd quit the year before, it couldn't hurt you anymore, but past mistakes never lose their power to injure. Echoes roll forward through the years.

You were glad we came, but you were so tired. I saw it in the hollows of your eyes. Even though you never yielded in your heart and mind, never doubted the doctors would find a way to save you, your body was giving up for you.

I knew you were gravely ill, but I didn't want to deal with it. That's how I function, push it back until I don't have a choice anymore. On December 24, 1998, that flashpoint occurred. You collapsed while everyone was trying to celebrate the holiday around you, pretending you weren't dying. Pretending we were full of good cheer and this was a holiday like any other.

But it wasn't. And holidays would never be the same again. You stayed in the hospital on life support until January 2. I held your hand while you died.

In September of 1999, I bore a son and I named him after you. He was conceived the night we put you in the ground. You never saw him or held him, but he is your namesake, not of blood, but of love.

Eight years later, it is your birthday. Remember how I always bought you a box of peanut brittle and two copies of the same book? Generally a spy novel. You liked Ian Fleming and John le Carré. I bought our books from a bargain table because I was a poor student back then. We would read it, and then discuss it. That gave us some common ground, something to talk about, because we didn't have much in common otherwise. We were the only two people in the family who liked to read. Now I'm the only one.

You didn't speak much. You wouldn't talk about the war or how you won the Purple Heart. You wouldn't talk about the Japanese woman you lived with, briefly, in Okinawa. You were a John Wayne sort of man, few words, powerful actions. I don't know what you thought about, most times. I know you loved your lawn with a passion. You loved puttering outside. You worried about me and made me carry a cardigan sweater in April, made me keep jumper cables in my trunk. You fretted because I never wore shoes. You came north from Kentucky and you didn't want me behaving in such a backwoods way. I still don't wear shoes, you know. I guess you can take the girl out of the hills, but you can't take the hills out of the girl.

After you died, I discovered you aren't my biological father, and it explained so much: why you seemed to prefer my sister and why I had to work so hard to earn your love. Because you knew I wasn't yours and you raised me anyway, provided for me materially, and you were never unkind. I don't blame you for that distance. I know it must have hurt everytime you looked at me, knowing I was proof of an infidelity.

The summer just before I turned 14, we watched the Cubs together. They were making a pennant run and I learnt about baseball as a way to get closer to you. It means more that you came to love me anyway. God knows I tried because I didn't understand. I made your lunches and your coffee. You always said mine was better than Mom's. I learnt to cook because I wanted to please you. You loved my scrambled eggs and my cookies and you said my potato soup was the best you ever ate. Twenty years later, I still see cooking as a way to please a man.

I wasn't part of what happened at my conception, and no matter what my mother says, you are my dad. You were in every way that matters. And I miss you. Eight years gone and I miss the way you fussed over whether I had jumper cables, if I had an emergency kit in the car and a pair of comfortable brogan shoes. When I graduated college, you said you were proud of me. I've made so many mistakes over the years; I hope you still are. You wanted me to teach as well as write, and I think I'd like that too.

Happy Birthday, Dad. I wish you a good book and peanut brittle, wherever you are.

Love,
Annie