The difference between me and the boy in my second grade classroom who claimed his dad could beat up everyone else’s dad was that I believed mine actually could.  My father was in Vietnam.  He let me wear parts of his uniform, stumble around the house in his combat boots, touch his medals – once.  He wasn’t drafted; he enlisted.  Twice he fought, First Cavalry Division, holding a snake in a black and white photo and firing a cannon the size of an elephant in another. Before that he was a gymnast, one of those wedge shaped guys with muscles on top of muscles on top of muscles, posing in his college yearbook levitating between two rings on chains with his arms outstretched like Jesus with a crew cut and tight white pants.  My dad might could even beat up Jesus.  Not that he would want to, or God would let him try, but he might could.  That’s all I’m saying.

I remember, I must have been four or five, bounding onto my parents’ bed on Saturday mornings.  My dad would lie there on his side with his eyes closed, feigning sleep, one arm sprawled out limp, hand open, fake snoring.  I’d sneak up and try to poke his giant palm with my finger before he could close his fingers around mine, pull me into himself and tickle and wrestle me until I was breathless and begging for him to stop with a smile aching my cheeks.  I was never fast enough.  And I was glad.  I’ve found nothing since that’s felt safer than being tossed and thrown and tickled within an inch of my little life on that bed by my father.  His scratchy whiskers.  His massive class ring and hairy knuckles.  The white t-shirt.  How he looked like he was wearing someone else’s face before he put on his glasses. His laugh. The way he pretended to be hurt when my tiny fists pounded into him with all their might.

I worried the entire nine months Gabriella was waiting to make her entrance.  And when Gresham was holed up inside his mamma.  And the same with Penelope too.  I’ve always worried I wouldn’t be able to broadcast the kind of safety and strength my father sent out effortlessly to me when I was small and again when I was an angry unlikable teen and again when I was a worried father-to-be.  I’ve worried my hands aren’t big enough, arms not muscled enough, voice not low enough, and I don’t wear white t-shirts to bed.  I worry.  Like my mother.

Today at lunch Becky asked the kids to each say something they liked about me being their dad.  It was more than a little forced.  And, truthfully, I didn’t expect a very thoughtful response.  Gabriella said she likes when I buy her stuff and when I do art with her.  Penelope said she likes it when I give her a bath. And then Gresham said, “I like it when you wrestle with me.” And I spotted my old grin on his face. And he reached for my hand and I grabbed his faster than a ninja and pulled him across the restaurant bench and into me and held his neck in the bend of my arm and ran my knuckles across his scalp and he wailed and giggled until he was breathless.

Thanks, Dad.  Happy Father’s Day.

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