Background music while reading: ‘Bittersweet’ by Big Head Todd & The Monsters
My father is an exceptional golfer. This is what most people know about him. He is 6 feet tall and has lived in this town nearly his whole life. Two younger sisters, high school sweetheart. He is a financial advisor who graduated from two Catholic schools and does not believe in God.
What I feel for him is near indescribable. He is one of the reasons I am who I am, why I do things the way I do. He is one of the reasons I write. I am trying to describe anyway.
My father thinks people like him because of what he can give them. I wish he knew people like him because babies do not cry when he holds them. Because he would drive or fly or call or be there if you needed, or even if he just thought you needed. Because he picks up food he thinks you might want to eat for dinner without asking, because he’d rather ask about your passions even if he doesn’t understand them, or your friends he cannot always place.
People like my father because he’s the type of father to buy a poetry book and ask the author how they started writing so he could tell his poet daughter about it. He’s the type of father to say his only worry in life is something bad happening to someone he loves. He tries to give advice even if he doesn’t know much about the topic. He sends his children Instagram reels about the untouchable currency that is being yourself. He is humble and kind and generous. Impatient, but thankful. Not too handy, but cuts perfect grass. Everyone’s first pick, favorite partner, best company. He is extremely well-intended, and has one of the highest senses of integrity I have ever known. To know him is a warmth in one’s life, to have been raised by him is an unquantifiable privilege.
Every day I learn more and more ways I am his daughter, which is to say every day I become more human and more grateful.
Happy Father’s Day, Dad. What a waste it would’ve been if I had never met you.
Brian (my dad, Brian Donohoe)
There’s a blue little puddle at the bottom of the driveway of a house that “does Christmas right.” You’ll grow up thinking this is how things go, and work on your soft grin. Boy in father’s dress shoes. Father playing catch outside with his sons. Son taking a big deep breath. When I was younger, I wrote my dad a poem comparing him to the grass in the backyard — called him steady, called him home.
5th grade and you can’t hang. We are seated on the twin mattress, lone tear, father plays his 11-year-old daughter “Bittersweet.” Pink walls chevron bedding and Big Head Todd & The Monsters. You’re there for the come down. You and I are both scared of something bad happening.
You kind of think everything is cool. Dark grey fleece — quarter zip — college days. You’ll call it a nature walk, call it yard work, call Irish Catholic, call it God because you don’t know where else to point the wins, call it chocolate chip pancakes, call it loving your sleep. And you were born steady. One time, the lady at the gas station spelled your name ‘brain.’
Golf team on the course 48 four kids and the green still welcomes you back. Stubborn blonde turns brown, you call her the miracle of your life and buy a ring. Miss your family, hang the clubs on the wall. Older brother all the time. Peace. Steady love and peace.
There’s a Van Gogh painting of a man in a straw hat lying against a large heap of hay — sleeping. It was so big Mom didn’t hang anything else on the wall. It was the only decoration you picked in the whole house. A life well thought. A life well lived.
Big Tree, 4 Pines
My father grew up in one of the first houses built on his street. When he was a boy, his father planted pine trees in the backyard, small and promising. Decades later, my father moved home, a few streets down. On a family bike ride, he takes us to see the the trees. Look how big they’ve grown. Look how much they’ve turned into.
The fall of my senior year, I came home for two weeks and my dad took me apple picking. I was home under uncomfortable circumstances, and I needed help. Neither of us knew what to do, but he told me there was a plan anyway. We picked out a half gallon of cider and he called off work. It was the lowest I had been in my life, and he was one of the only people I’d let see it.
I was crying at the restaurant he took me to, so he distracted me by ordering soup and telling me how he met Mom. He called her the greatest miracle of his life, and then I was crying for a different reason. He faced the waitress so I wouldn’t be embarrassed. It was sunny. He swore he had nowhere else to be.
He told me there was nothing that couldn’t be solved regarding my visit home, because I had opened up about why I was there. There are times we check in, and times we wait it out. There are times we water the feeling, and there are times we let it lie. But there was nothing negative that could grow from us being in it together.
My father grew up in the neighborhood he raised us in. Golden boy off to college, off to the city, off to a house down the street from his elementary school. He knows what it means to come back, come through, stay grounded. He’s a doer, a fixer, a “let’s make a plan.” He’s really great at analogies and recommending movies and sitting next to you when you’re down and out. He is the voice in my head, and a good one at that. My dad is my hero because he has never once given up on me. He knows who he is and where his love lies planted, and I’m unsure he realizes how often and how genuinely he waters it.
I know what belief is because of him. I know what true, dumbfounding gratitude is because of him. I know what home is, what watching growth looks like. He is the father I wish everyone had. He is a friend I am better knowing. If I couldn’t have been his daughter, I’d at least liked to have lived in the neighborhood.
Look how big it’s grown, Dad. Look how much it’s all turned into.
