Minkgirl Muses

Gratitude Project
Day 14 – Father

I am grateful for my Father – Dad – Daddio as I playfully call him. He was a warm, loving, and protective presence in my early childhood years – playing guitar lullabies to help me sleep, hiking with me and my mother in the Blue Ridge mountains, listening with bright eyes and encouraging words to all my stories and needs. One of my earliest memories is the warmth of my father’s hand in mine after the cold metal of the swingset chains on a fall day.

During my teenage years, he was slow to anger, quick to forgive, and long on patience. I remember coming home with my first speeding ticket at 16, petrified by my own mistake and the prospect of losing a precious new freedom. He listened to my story, sympathized with my fear, and then helped me brainstorm better driving practices for the future. His slow, calm, rationale approach to problems offered valuable counterbalance to my more emotional and intense responses.

But one of the deepest and most unexpected gratitudes I carry for my Dad is the fact that he forced me to play basketball. When I started high school, he turned to me – his bookish, artsy, and clutzy daughter – and said “It’s time for you to play a team sport.” I thought he had lost his mind. My father had never required that I do any particular activity before. Couldn’t he see that I was hopelessly uncoordinated? That I had no business trying to do anything sport-related? I got to choose the sport –because I’m tall basketball seemed the obvious choice – but Dad wasn’t satisfied with just one season - he made me play for 3 years! I stunk up the LM Junior Varsity Team that whole time, despite endless wind sprints and backyard ball-handling drills. The sweet and ineffectual JV coach even had a mantra ready for the infrequent occasions when I got my hands on the ball – “Okay ‘Tine, pass it, PASS IT, don’t dribble!!!”

But as it turns out, basketball was the start of many good things in my life. It was my entryway to joining Crew, a sport which I did like, and which I was good at. My 3 years of toil on the basketball court also taught me many valuable lessons about perseverance, and the satisfaction that comes from working hard to overcome obstacles. The basketball team was also my first experience collaborating with others – an activity that has become central to my artistic life. Dad really knew what he was doing.

As I deal with the many parenting challenges that my 2-year old and 6-year old lob at me daily, I try to keep the image of my patient, loving, and occasionally brilliantly insistent Dad in the back of my mind – a little beacon to remind me that while I will do some things wrong as a parent, I will also do much that is right.

Photo: Dad reading to Miss V (age 18 months)

Labels: Gratitude Project