When I was a little girl my dad traveled. Every week he’d make his way to a work destination that was five hours away. Monday mornings before we got up for school, he would leave me, my mother and my two brothers and reappear on Thursday or Friday evening for the weekends.


In the ‘60’s and ’70s psychology experts hadn’t published much in the mainstream about the role a father plays in a daughter’s life. Middle class men focused on providing for their family’s material needs and “winged it” on the “father” part.

I knew something was different about my family.  In my friends’ homes there were signs: a man’s shoe in the hall, newspapers strewn across a sofa, a wave at the door, a ride in the car, all signs of the presence of  “fathers.”

While my dad was away, I spent much of my time sitting in the big leather chair in his study, taking in the traces he left behind, like the smell of pipe tobacco. Closing my eyes, I’d visualize him smoking one of the wooden pipes that sat on his desk. I’d gaze into a glass case filled with an antique gun collection.  Opening the desk drawer, I marveled at the tidy small compartments filled with paper clips, rubber bands and stamps. Looking at the perfectly sharpened pencils lined up one next to the other, then thinking of my own drawers stuffed with a mass of unfolded clothing furled into balls, I could only draw one conclusion. How different we were!

Depending on just my mom and the dog to keep us safe during the week didn’t give me much confidence, so I did not rest easy during the night.

There were phone calls, mostly to my mother, when I did get a chance to say “Hello, I love you Dad.” Hearing his voice just made the pain even more unbearable.

The traveling continued into my teenage years, but by this time I had learned how to conceal the aching in my heart, keeping most of my feelings tightly under wraps. There was a place where some of this emotion began to reveal itself. I began acting it out in school plays; and painting or drawing it. As the ink flowed from my brush, curving, swaying, speeding up, slowing down as it formed an image, the freedom I felt was hard to describe, it was as if I were speaking another language, one that was all mine, that came from a place I had long forgotten. This act of creating became a process of archiving feelings from an overwhelming inventory that brought some temporary relief. The arts continue to offer me comfort and somewhere to place my feelings and memories.

My father passed away last year. I know that memory is not a perfect instrument; I remember him with great fondness and love, with heartfelt intentions for his family. As a grandfather he shined. I understand that I would not have developed my artistic sensibilities without him. He was a painter, loved to paint boats, some of my fondest memories are those times we’d go to the lake, and I could be part of his deep love of the water.  l’d listen to him describe the beauty he saw around him. It was during those times that his world and mine merged, where we got a glimpse of each others’ spirits, like light glistening off the water playing hide and seek as we sat, side by side.

Right now someone I care for is away overseas, and I long for us to be together again. It’s a different longing however, not the “longings” of a needy child, but rather the longing of a self-sufficient, whole and complete woman.