Awed by Love

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not
proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it
keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the
truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

My father loves me. I'm ashamed to admit that I never realized or appreciated just how much. Ever since ... forever, really, but especially since we born, my father has worked so hard to provide us with what we need, and even harder to give us what we want. I remember when I was a little girl, that spending time with Dad was a special thing because he normally worked 80-90 hours a week, night shift. He would always make time for us, though. His favorite thing was to make his girls smile.

When I was about five, my mom took us to Philadelphia so that she could help my grandmother pack and sell her house. I don't remember how long we stayed, but I remember the day that a package came for us from my dad. There were all sorts of things inside of it, but I only remember one: a video. He had and borrowed a friend's recorder and made a movie of him taking care of the farm. He went through each of our animals (mine, believe it or not, was a goat. her name was Goldie and I had bottle-fed her and she was kind of like a dog. She was always getting out of the fence to come greet us), and he showed us how much they missed us. Goldie wouldn't stay in her pen at all and went wandering around the yard bleating, Carolynne's dog, Dixie, would not stop barking, Christina's chicken hatched her egg, but the little one kept getting picked on so Dad assured her that he had moved it and taken care of it for her. We still have that movie; it's labeled "Dad Loves his Girls."


My dad worked at a text-tile mill for fifteen years. When I was around 12 or 13, it became pretty clear that the mill jobs would soon be out-sourced. My dad, in order to prevent long term hardship, enrolled in the local technical school to get certified as an HVAC technician. For the next two years, he went to work at 6pm, worked until 6am, drove to school, slept in the parking lot for two hours, went to class from 8-noon, came home, ate lunch with us, went to sleep, and started over again. Sometimes, he would try and get some yard work done. During the fifteen years he worked there, he took one vacation. He went to work no matter what; one time, had a fever of 104 and still went to work, despite Mom's warnings. Because he worked so hard while he was sick, he damaged nerves in his arm and suffers from that a lot.

When the mill finally did close, things still did not go that well, he went through a series of jobs, that while absolutely crummy and awful for him, were good for us-like the chicken job, so he perserved. Eventually he found a job in Birmingham, repairing reefer (refridgerator) units on semis. He loved doing that job. Unfortunately, the boss didn't like him. He was promised a raise several times and never given it. He definitately deserved it; even the boss acknowledged that he was one of his best techs; he could do things that no one else there could. But things with the boss escalated and my dad didn't like being so far from us (Birmingham is three hours away, he stayed up there with family during the week, came home on weekends). Before the things with the boos came to a head (but not very much before), he found a job only 50 miles away doing the same thing. This time his boss was a decent man. My dad loved working for him, and the boss knew how great he was at this job. His boss, however, was soon transferred and the one who came instead thought even worse of him than the one in Bimingham. His evaluations were never accurate. Things weren't good for my dad at all. A guy at his work stole his tools (thousands of dollars worth). He died and when his sister came to get his stuff, my dad didn't have the heart to tell her that they weren't his. His boss always told him how bad he was at his job (despite the fact that his boss also had to ask him how to do things). Dad went to a national training thing for ThermoKing and was the first person to ever solve the problem. And he didn't even use the computers. One day, my father was talking to his old boss- a person of quite a bit seniority within the company- about what the current one was doing- it was all stuff against the handbook. Within a week, my dad was fired for "voicing disagreement with management."

Over the next couple of years, my dad had a series of jobs 50-90 miles away. Eventually, he got tired of the commute and it became not worth it with gas prices. So he found jobs here. These jobs weren't enough, though. It stressed him out to have to worry so much about paying bills. He didn't care about the bills, he wanted to be able to give us yeses when we asked for something. He wanted to be able to bring my mom a random present just because he loves her.

Somehow, during all this time, he taught me how to wire a house, how to shoot a gun, how to skin what you shoot, how to build a barn, how to rebuild a car (we're still working on that one), how to run a farm for food and profit, and how to do so many other things, that if I were to name them all, it would take a book. But what he really did was show wme how to love.

Now, he's across the country, working at a job that he doesn't particulary care for, in weather that he absolutely hates (10 degrees is the high tomorrow. He works outside and it's snowing.) He works in a crew that doesn't particularly like him because he's better than they are at the job. They go behind him and undo what he has done. His immediate boss thinks incompetent. He wants to move him to a different crew. A crew where it wouldn't be possible for my mother and siblings to follow him. His boss's boss, though, saw the guys doing that. They've been warned, but the tension is still there for my dad. All this he has done because he loves us. He didn't do it for the money, he didn't do it because he wanted to; he did it because if he did, life would be easier for us. If he did, he would be able to say yes to things we wanted, he could have flowers randomly sent to the door for my mother, he could help his daughter buy food and pepperspray and clothes and tuition.

And I didn't care until last year. I loved my dad, yes. I also argued incessantly with him. I loved our time together, but didn't always want it. I sometimes was attitudical about it. (You guys have never seen my attitude. You may think you have, but you haven't. Think the Andy fiasco times oh, 300.)

I don't know how I could have been such a brat. I haven't seen my dad in 7 months, before that I hadn't seen him for 2 months, I saw him for a couple weeks this summer, but he was always working. I miss him like crazy. He misses us so much. But he loves us too much to give up on this. He never thinks of himself. If he can think of something to do for us, he does it without question, no matter how much work it takes him. He doesn't know it, but tomorrow my mother is flying into Denver to spend Thanksgiving with him.

I must admit, I am jealous of my mother. I wish I could see him. I wish I could give him a hug. I wish there was another way for him. I wish that I had seen this before I moved away. I wish that I could take back everything awful I said to him, even though I know he's forgotten it. I wish that it wasn't so cold for him. I wish I was there to cook him dinner and wash his clothes. I wish I had smiled more when I was younger instead of throwing tantrums because I couldn't have what I wanted (I didn't do this very often, but when I did...)

My father loves me. And I wish that I could show him how much I love and miss him.