Who Would Be A Father!

If I could explain my relationship with my dad in a concise, coherent way, I wouldn't have anything to explain. Whatever we have is storied, our parallel growth knotted. We are, in a word, complicated, but that is not the tale I am here to tell.

In preschool, I met a girl. She was, like me, about two years old; I don't remember what she looked like then, nor how our earliest interactions played out. I do know what she looks like now, and I can tell you that when we met up two weekends ago, our night was riddled with milkshake smiles and late-night laughter. She is and has always been my best friend. I cannot imagine a future without her.

When she was about ten—we were both ten—her dad got sick.

I have two concrete memories of her dad. He was our softball coach for the one year we both played: I remember a snapshot of an afternoon after a game. There were water balloons on the grass. We were eight years old, our parents chatting over our heads. She was bouncing off his stomach, grinning as they talked. I'd won player of the week; her dad had given me a softball with my name on it in his hand. I still have the softball. I haven't played since.

The second is of one afternoon at preschool, a rare day where he came to pick her up instead of her mom. He'd seen me hovering by the door, knelt down, and asked me, with a smile I can still see like we're right back in that cobwebby backyard, "Are you going to play softball again this year?" And I, having already conferred with my best friend—his daughter—said no, I was not. He laughed. Like he was expecting it. I don't think I watched them leave.

Her dad was in the hospital for what, to my ten-year-old brain, felt like years. In reality, I don't think it was more than nine months. He died in October. I was in the kitchen when my mom told me; the kitchen lights streaking through my tears is the only other memory I have of him, and it isn't even corporeal. He wasn't even there. It wasn't even about me—my best friend had lost her father. Her sister had lost a father. Her mother had lost a husband. I had lost... what? I hadn't even visited him in the hospital.

What I do remember, most distinctly, from those terrible months after, I do not think I will ever forget. I didn't go to the funeral—I wasn't allowed. My parents went, though, and later, after I'd asked, my mom described to me what my best friend was like. I hadn't seen her since the summer.

"She was sad," my mom said simply. Quiet. "We were all sad."

I was ten, and I didn't know much about funerals. I filled in the rest almost involuntarily, pictured a big lawn and rows of folding chairs and my best friend crying in the front row in all black. It feels a little foolish, now; I think I crafted a scene of her in an old-fashioned 1950s gown, complete with spotted veil and kerchief.

As months creaked on and winter drew close, I clung to my own dad, overhung always by this fear that suddenly he, too, would be in the hospital, and then he would be gone. I wasn't emotionally intelligent enough to identify this anxiety for what it was; only recently did I piece it all together, and even now I think some of the puzzle is missing. But I danced around the topic of death with my dad, committed to keeping up with the tempo of some ghastly gavotte only I could hear.

Eventually our weird pseudo-talks culminated in a real one. It must've been at least a year after that October, at least, some sort of anniversary of grief. He sat me down in his room, phone in hand. Pulled open to Facebook, probably. I'd seen my best friend a few times in person, by this point, watched as best I could as she started re-envisioning her life, walking a path so divergent to mine. I knew her mom was cataloguing every event she could, pasting together a digital scrapbook. A patchwork guarantee of health and safety and remembrance. I knew my dad kept up with her posts, some sort of morbid obligation, sentinel duty.

"I will always regret," my dad began, and this was my cue to look anywhere but at his face, "not taking you to see him"—"him" being my best friend's dad—"while he was in the hospital. I took your brother, once, you know."

"Yeah." I nodded, like you're supposed to. Some spare muscle in my chest tightened.

"I saw him, lying there, and I knew..." My dad took a deep breath, glanced over at the door and the empty hallway beyond. "Don't repeat this, you understand? Do not ever tell her"—my best friend—"I told you this. This is just for you to hear, okay?"

I was maybe eleven. I was already used to heavy secrets.

"I understand." I really just wanted to know what he was so nervous to say. What he'd saved for me and me alone.

"I saw him lying there, and I knew he was never going to leave that hospital. Maybe under different circumstances, if they'd... if things had been different..." He was trying to backtrack, soften the words. I like to think he'd realized what he was saying, and to whom he was saying it.

"I understand, dad."

We made eye contact for the first time, over the glow of his phone screen. I hugged him, and I said I loved him, and I left, because if I hadn't I would have cried and that would have been embarrassing for both of us.

I'm not sure if my dad remembers that interaction, if he remembers those months following that funeral the way I do. I'm not sure I want him to—I was, after all, a bumbling kid, and he was, as far as I could tell, exactly the same as always. Years have passed since. I'm not the person I was then, and he is not the father he was, either. We have both grown; I do not think we have grown closer, but we have grown. I have learned to hide. The girl from preschool is my lifeline. I am, in turn, hers.

But on father's day I put aside my misgivings and my grudges and I hug my dad. I make him stupid cards and I let him say whatever weird nonsense he wants to without comment. I help make the food he wants and I watch the videos he wants to show me. I embrace his faults and I enjoy our time. I do it all for the same reason I hold onto every card he writes me, every tag he pins to presents my mom bought: I do it because I remember that October, and I remember that bone-deep horrible empathy I had for my best friend, and I do not want to have any regrets when that day comes for me.