The First Man I Ever Loved

I watch from the passenger seat as he turns the wheel of his old pickup truck. His blue eyes remain focused on the road, glancing my way only for a moment to ask, "Ready to catch some fishies, little punk?" I nod my head and flash a half-toothless grin. Dad turns back to the road, his strong voice singing along to a Bob Seger song on the radio. The summer sun has bleached his hair even blonder than usual and a thick, strawberry blonde mustache rests beneath his round nose. 

We get to the beach and Dad puts the pickup in park. We slowly walk down to the water, hot sand sinking under our flip-flopped feet. Dad carries the tackle box and fishing rods; I carry the two Styrofoam cups that temporarily serve as a home for the worms. I ask him if the worms have families, if I'm murdering them by putting them onto the hooks. A big white smile squares across his face as he chuckles. He assures me that it's not murder as he makes adjustments to the rods and fiddles with the tackle. I don't understand what he's doing, but assume it is very intricate and essential to the fishing process.

Dad's left arm guides the fishing rod back slowly and then jerks it quickly forward. The line cascades into the air; the bait and tackle plop into the calm bay in front of us, releasing ripple after ripple. Dad talks me through the process and I try my best to follow his instructions, but somehow my line gets tangled behind me. He laughs in a sweet, gentle way that assures me he is not upset with me. He fixes the line and throws it out into the water. 

We sit on our plastic lawn chairs all afternoon, the ends of the rods buried deep in the sand. He tells me stories as we eat Cheetos and drink canned Fresca. The sun beats down on our bare freckled shoulders and he keeps reminding me to reapply sunscreen to my fair skin. When the sun starts to set on the bay, we load up the pickup and head back to the trailer. We have nothing to show for our hard work. Neither of us seems to mind.

So many women have stories about absent fathers, either physically or emotionally. I have neither. I had a father who dropped everything to be at my swimming lessons, my choir concerts, and even my piano recitals (ugh). I have the opposite of "daddy issues" - I have a bar set so high that it is nearly impossible to match. And yet, even with such a strong male figure in my life, even after watching how lovingly and respectfully he treated my mother, even with countless examples of what true love should be and daily "I love you"s from the man I loved most in the world, I allowed myself to be in degrading relationships. 

I remember being about thirteen or fourteen years old on a car ride to a neighboring town to see a movie when my father looked over at me and said, "Please don't go for the bad boys, Lauren." I remember laughing and asking him why he thought I ever would. He told me that sweet girls like me like to fix things, we like to cure people. He had seen too many of these girls get burned and he didn't want that to happen to me. I know that I heard him, but I should have listened.