Ronnie Joe

I wrote a paragraph, and I erased it. I wrote another, and I changed it. Over and over, I kept starting again. I wanted to tell a story about a singular event, something significant, but, then I realized that wouldn’t be right. You see, that’s not the kind of person he is. He isn’t one big event; he’s a bunch of tiny moments gathered into a big, lumpy heap and held with dabs of glue, bits of string, and a whole lot of love. Like a giant, well-worn teddy-bear whose stuffing has gotten lumpy and whose fur has been rubbed the same way so many times that it’s just cloth now, he stands as a beacon for me and for many people who have loved him. That’s who he is, so that’s how I’ll tell his story, in snippets of memory tenuously held together by a common denominator, by my dad.

When he was just a boy, he spent his days working the cattle that his parents owned and finding spare time to hunt and fish. He knows these woods like he knows his own body. He knows where the deep spots are in the creeks and in the river. He knows the places the deer like to cross, and he knows where the ducks fly over on their way to the pond. He has tried to teach myself and my brothers all that he knows. He’s done a decent job, but we will probably never know this land as intimately as he does. I’ll be honest, the idea makes me a little bit sad.

My brothers and I could not have asked for a better provider than our dad. He worked almost constantly when we were small so that our mom could stay home with us until we were old enough to go to school. We grew up in the sticks on the outer fringes of a town that only recently acquired a Dollar General as its only store. There are no red lights, a weekend restaurant, a post office, and a poor excuse for a park that is literally naught but a glorified walking track directly across the road from said post office. Most days, he would get off work from his job at the manufacturing plant, drive home, load up his personal welding machine, and take off again to someone’s house to do some work for them. He would come home just in time to play with us kids for a little while before taking a shower and going to bed early because he had to be up again before the sun to go back to work.

Wild game was frequently on our table. Even with him working so much, there wasn’t just a lot of excess money floating around. My brothers are five and seven years older than myself, so they were in school by the time I was born. I told you about where we lived, you can imagine that the local public school isn’t much to be desired. My parents made the difficult decision to send us to private school regardless of the expense involved. Our dad was the sole provider of the family. Looking back, I really don’t know how he did it. He single-handedly sent two children to private school while simultaneously paying all the bills and keeping all five of us fed. That fact alone is enough to make me admire him for the rest of my life.

My daddy also loves Jesus. Every single day, he wakes up early, and his very first task of the day is to read a chapter in his Bible. He reads at least one chapter every day. I’m not certain at this point how many times he has read through the entire thing, but I do know that I aspire to be just like that one day. There are other ways that I know he loves Jesus. My dad acts a lot like Him. He doesn’t get angry very much and he loves with his entire being. He knows almost everyone, and he is never too good to stop and talk with anyone he knows anywhere at any time. When I meet new people, I can generally tell them who my dad is, and they automatically know who I am. He’s not just well-known. He’s respected, and my heart overflows with pride at that fact.

As a child, there was nothing worse than disappointing daddy, and the feeling is even worse as an adult. I had the stupid idea that I would care less about my parent’s opinions of me as I got older. To say that I was wrong about that would be grossly understating just how much I value the opinions of the best people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. The look on his face when one of us would willfully misbehave was nearly enough to straighten out a bobby pin. He knew exactly how to make you feel like you were no more than three inches tall.

He’s a bit rough, my dad. That’s the best word I can conjure. His hair, what’s left of it, has faded from deep black to mostly white, and his beard is a perfect match for his hair with the exception that there is quite a bit more of it. His skin, where the sun hits it, is an almost olive color from working outside in the sun all the time, and when you look closely you can see the rough texture of it. His hands have callouses so thick that he can handle items five times hotter than the average individual because the heat just doesn’t reach the nerves through all the layers of dead skin. His clothes are grease stained and full of holes from burns and stretches, and his work boots are scuffed and muddy.

He’s rough. He’s gentle. He’s kind. He’s firm. He’s a complicated human being, and I find myself wondering how I’m going to move on with my life when old age takes him away from me. He is my solid place to land when the rest of my life feels like it’s spiraling out of control right underneath my feet. He is Ronnie Joe to the world, but he is Daddy to me.