Steadfast, Strong and Soft

Dear Daddy,

You've been gone for just over 27 years, but I feel you with me almost as if you were still physically here. I see you in Jordan's appetite. I call him "Feedbag," because like you, he can really, well, strap on the old proverbial feedbag. I can almost conjure you up through the whiff of Old Spice in the air. And I hear your words flying out of my mouth, if not every day, most days.

I was 23 when you died and I never really got to tell you what an impact you had on my life. I mean, sure, you knew some stuff. But you never got to see me become the person I was meant to be. You never got to see me walk across that university stage to get the degree you always wanted me to have.

You never got to see me in my lawyers' collar and robe. Of course, you never liked lawyers. Remember telling me that if I were going to spend all that time in school that I should become something more useful than a "liar?" I know you were half-joking. Sure, you didn't exactly trust the slick, fast-talking types that peddled subterfuge and Latin over plain common sense. But, I know you, and I know you'd have been down at the Scotia Bank in Oromocto, in line, with my picture in hand, proudly bragging to anyone and everyone about your daughter the "woman lawyer."

Oh, and for shits and giggles, and given your distaste for the legal profession, your picture hung proudly in every office I inhabited. It was sort of our private joke.

But I digress. What I really want to talk about is how you shaped me. I want to somehow convey my love and gratitude to you for not only being a pretty cool dad but also for showing me the value of hard work, duty, strength, vulnerability and honesty. You taught me what a good man was. And even more, you taught me what a good human was.

You didn't have to have me. The last thing you needed was a baby. You and Mom were 43 when you got that phone call that changed both our lives. Your baby brother needed help. His girlfriend, the mother of his 3 children died unexpectedly. She was 26, married to another man and just gone. He was jobless, terrified and confused. Nobody was on his side. Not the hospital, not the law, not the family. In fact, most of them scrambled to make excuses as to why they couldn't help him or his now motherless children.

Nobody, out of all of you, and there were, 10 or 12, wanted to step up. Nobody had a place in their hearts or homes for a 6-year-old boy, an 18-month-old girl and me, the 3 week old, raven-haired infant. Some had good reason. Some had a dozen children of their own. Some clearly had no financial wherewithal. Some didn't care.

But you were different. You didn't walk away. You didn't make excuses. You answered the phone. You answered the call. You stepped up. You didn't ask questions. You dropped everything, drove the hour to Woodstock and stood firm behind and beside your brother and his kids.

You took us all. All 3 of us. You adopted me. I was yours forever. You told me the nurse placed me in your arms when you came to the tiny country hospital and that I grabbed your nose. You said you knew at that moment that I was your baby and I definitely was.

I know it was hard for you to raise Brian and Chrissy, my siblings, for an entire year and then give them back. I know you didn't want to let them go. They had a good home with you. But you made a deal. You adopt me, and you take on my older siblings, with whom your brother had a bond until he was able to secure stable employment and housing.

I wasn't aware at the time, but I remember the tears in your eyes when you spoke about them. I remember the pride with which you showed me Brian's grade 1 picture. You loved us all like your own and then had to let 2 of us go. And you could have fought. You could have kept all 3 of us. You'd have won, legally. But morally, you stood by your word and your brother. You said one year, and one year it was. I can't imagine the nights you cried over them, but I know you did.

But, you still had me. And I remember that the sun rose and set atop your head when I was little. You were the first person I ever trusted. I mean really, completely trusted, without question, without reservation. You were Superman to me. I always felt safe.

Do you remember how mad Mom would get when I'd stand on top of the stair landing and you stood at the bottom and you'd tell me to jump? And I did. It was my favourite game. It wasn't even that many stairs, 10 at the most. She'd shriek and holler about how the baby would get hurt. I'd jump and you'd always catch me. You never failed, not once. I knew I could jump each and every time and I knew you were there to catch me. And you always did.

I noticed as I grew older, 5, 6, 7, that people weren't always nice to us. There was something they didn't like. There was a distaste, a disgust that made no sense to me. The large, imposing Black man with a tiny light-skinned child. It perplexed and enraged. But you always defended us. Sometimes physically.

I remember the time in KMart, a woman, chubby, with lightish hair, grabbed me by the arm. Her husband and a couple of other men were with her. They wanted to take me somewhere, to report whatever wrongdoing they thought was happening. I remember words like Black and White and kidnap. I didn't know what they meant. I was scared. I remember telling the lady to take her hands off me. I remember she gripped me tighter. I also remember the men closing in on us.

You told me to stand back. To get out of the way. I can't honestly say what I did, the white woman still had her hands on me. I remember being terrified when one of the men swung for you. I didn't want those bad men to hurt my daddy.

But I didn't have to be afraid, did I? No because you laid all 3 of them out and spoke to the manager on your way out. It wasn't the last time you had to do that. You always fought for what was right.

Remember the time on the bus? You were so sick. Your kidneys had failed and you were getting dialysis. It had affected your heart (well that and let's be honest, you ate for shit), and you were waiting for your surgery date for a quadruple bypass. There was a young boy on board that day. He was maybe 8 or 9. He was from the north side and Black. Two men, white and middle-aged taunted him from the second he got on. Real tough guys they were, picking on a child.

You told Lloyd, the bus driver to stop. He knew you. He stopped. You grabbed one guy in each hand and physically tossed them off the bus. And then, you told Lloyd to drive you to your doctor, Dr Johnson. You weren't feeling well. Your chest hurt and you couldn't breathe. I remember you said he was astounded at how high your blood pressure was. You could have died that day, on that bus, but you didn't seem to care. You defended what was right. That was all you knew and all that mattered.

I learned that steadfast, strong sense of right and wrong from you. I learned how to stand in my truth. I learned how to stand my ground, even if it meant trouble. I learned that right and wrong were actual things and that they were worth fighting for.

I also learned acceptance. For a simple man with a 4th-grade education, born and raised in small-town Atlantic Canada in the 30s and 40s, you were incredibly open-minded. You took people as they came. It really was that simple for you.

My first memory of this was watching figure skating with you and Mom. We loved our skating, didn't we? It may have been the Olympics, I don't know. But I remember you remarking that Toller Cranston might have been a "queer sort," but nobody on the planet could skate like him. I had no idea what any of that meant then. But later, I'd come to understand the depth of your acceptance of all humanity, regardless of race, creed, gender or orientation.

You were kind of ahead of your time if you can believe that. I'm sure you remember the guy in the dress at the Oromocto Mall. He was about your age, mid to late 50s. He wore a floral print dress, and sometimes a brimmed hat. He didn't wear underwear.

Everybody laughed at him. I came to the mall once in search of you and your wallet. I was about 13 and in search of even more books and clothes than I already had. I was with my best friend at the time, Tess. She saw you, she snickered about the creep that was with you.

I approached you. You were sitting at a table together at Molly's Coffee Shop. You were both sitting there, at a table, inside the interior corridor of the mall, for the entire town to see. You and the guy in the dress. There you both were, you with a Coke, him (or her, I'm not sure what pronoun he would have preferred, it wasn't a question we knew about in 1984, but more later on this) with a coffee, yacking and laughing like old friends.

You did that because you were old friends. Tess and I sat for a bit. I learned that your pal in the dress had a PhD in English Literature. He also had a wife and a dog. He loved the same books I did. He was really cool. He talked to me about University and things I wanted to do with my life. He offered to lend me books from his vast library.

I know you loved him as a friend. I know you also admired him as an educated person who could maybe pick up where you left off as far as I was concerned.

But what I remember, is nobody saw his intelligence, nobody saw his education. Nobody saw anything but a man in a dress. He was a weirdo. He was creepy. He wasn't one of us. Except you. You saw a person. You took the time to have a conversation. You didn't care what the town thought. In those actions, you taught me acceptance. I can't say you taught me tolerance. I know that would have been the word back then, but what you taught me went beyond that. What you taught me was that those who may differ from the norm are not just to be tolerated, they're to be respected. They're as human as any one of us. Because we all differ from the norm in some way.

PS, Daddy, that guy in the dress, I met him years later. He knew me instantly, it's not like I changed much. Same face, same curly hair, same almond-shaped eyes which are indicative of our family. It was about 10 years ago, and we had coffee. I bumped into her at Kings Place. I didn't recognize her. She approached me and asked if Reuben was my father. I said yes, hoping for a short chat having come from Tax Court that day and, let's be honest, I was waiting for wine-o-clock.

She was old. I mean old, like 80 perhaps. Her style hadn't changed much. Same mid-80s Golden Girls floral print. I don't think she ever formally went through the medical transition. It's a daunting and expensive ordeal.

She asked if she could buy me a coffee at the Second Cup. She said she was a friend of yours. I obliged. Of course, I did, why wouldn't I? She was still living her life happily. She did get divorced. But she stressed to me more than once, the value of your friendship back then. She told me how you made her feel human. The only thing I regret is that she told me she swerved your funeral out of fear. She was worried she wouldn't have been welcome. That breaks my heart to this day. And I told her, she'd have been more than welcome. And what better way to honour the legacy of my open-minded daddy than to show up.

Speaking of open-minded and your soft heart, do you remember Francis? You know exactly who I mean. He was the Indigenous foster kid across the street. He was angry, mean and misunderstood. He was placed in a home that wanted the government cheque and not him.

He also was a bully. He stomped on my bare toes. He beat me black and blue. I came home in tears over him. But you never got mad. Your normal reaction to someone hurting your baby was rage. But with Francis, it wasn't.

When his foster mother sent him out to sell trinkets from their home so she could go to bingo, you bought them. When I had a birthday party, you invited him. You knew he was hungry.

When we went to the fair, you invited him personally. You didn't care that he was mean to me or that I hated him. You invited him as your guest. And I hated it! I didn't get it then.

I get it now. Francis was a tough boy with a soft heart. He had nobody. No one cared about him. He was an income to his foster family. He was a joke at school, obviously Indigenous, but passing as White because he had no idea, and just too troubled to cope, you championed him. Against my word. Against Mom's. You saw something in him. You saw yourself.

You could never stand to see a child in need. That's why you spent hundreds of dollars every year, money you could have spent more wisely, on the poor Black kids out on Elm Hill Road. And when you took that on, it wasn't just a Christmas hamper. You learned and memorized all the birthdays of the children. When you were in, you were completely in.

You supported at least 4 families. And you did it out of love. Just like Francis, your love and compassion for children always guided you. You saw the good in even the worst of kids. Francis was my bully and you tamed him with the love and understanding he needed.

I still remember standing outside of Winchesters in the summer of 1987. Francis had moved with his family across town. He was pumping gas. He called out to you. He was so proud. He'd grown into a strong, handsome young man. He told you about his graduation from his school and how he was waiting on the Army. He was joining and he was going to be a cook. You hugged him tight and gave him a $10 bill and told him how proud you were.

That was you. Compassion, understanding and no judgment. I learned that from you. And I've passed it on to my kids.

I've also passed on the value of education and hard work to them. You'd be so proud of all of them. Maybe of me too. Can you believe I'm 50? If you were here, you'd be 92 right now. But yeah, 50, crazy, right?

I did what you said. I took care of Mom. It wasn't easy. She wasn't an easy person to deal with. Let's be honest, she didn't like me much. But you taught me about responsibility, duty and right and wrong. She left this world on Christmas Day, 2020. I hope she's up there with you, probably arguing. Yeah, if she's there, she's telling someone off.

But back to your grandsons. You loved Justin! I remember you cried when I dropped out of university. I know you wanted me to have an education more than you wanted me to have a child at 19. But that was only until you met him. I used to be a bit jealous. It felt like you loved him even more than me.

I remember coming over and you'd say hi and then immediately after, you'd put your arms out and say, "gimmie the baby." He was your new best friend.

You delighted in him the way you delighted in me. And you did the same with Jordan although you'd never come to know him that well. He wasn't quite 2 when you died. I remember the spirited boxing matches. I remember his hot temper and you rubbing his little feet to soothe him to sleep or his afternoon nap. He doesn't really, he was too young.

And you never got to meet Jeffrey at all. He's 27 now and he carried your name as his middle name. He's a lot like you. He doesn't trade in fancy words. He's a simple guy, with a strong sense of right and wrong. He has a right hook like you, and like me. but he uses it sparingly and only if absolutely necessary.

In some ways, I feel like you hung on until I was ready to let you go. You were sick for so long, the kidney transplant, the quadruple bypass, the breaking down of each of them. You stood, sickly, but proudly at my high school graduation as I won every award I could get my hands on. You infiltrated the post-graduation festivities, to my horror, to make sure your daughter's good name wasn't sullied by some nare-do-well. There were no worries there, they weren't after me.

You gave me money for food, even when it meant going without your own medication when Justin was small and I was struggling. You did it because that was what you did. You put others before yourself. You found delight in giving.

You also showed no shame in emotion. You were the strongest, toughest guy I knew. A former boxer, a war veteran, they didn't come tougher than you! Yet, we cried together. You cried over the Jungle Book. You cried when Ellen left Alex on Family Ties. You cried over countless episodes of Little House on the Prairie and The Waltons. You sobbed uncontrollably when Uncle Art and Uncle Charlie died.

It was in those moments that I learned that true strength wasn't in shying away from emotion, it was in embracing and expressing it. Good thing, because, like you, I cry at the drop of a hat and there's no shame in my game!

You pushed me to be my best. I know it was partly for you too, you wanted your baby to shine! You saw a spark in me, intellectual and in sports. You wanted your reckoning. Can't blame you, the racism of the early 50s stole your shot at Olympic boxing. So when you had a swift-running, kid, hey, why not? Even better, she was a hell of a gymnast. Whatever, either sport would do.

But when I said I was done. You let it go. When I wanted to chase boys more than medals, you argued, you listened, and when I told you my heart wasn't there, you stepped aside.

When the offers came from Toronto, Montreal and New York to train me as an elite gymnast, you asked me what I wanted. I wanted to do it. I wanted to fly through the air, I wanted to command the floor and the bars for Canada. I wanted the gold so bad I could taste it!

I knew in my gut, at 11, that I was the one that could do it. And you stood with me. You met with coaches. You met with host families. You were game to uproot our lives, just for me. You sought a transfer from your commanding officer, which he granted, just for me. You were ready to turn your life completely upside down for the unrealized potential of a pre-pubescent athlete.

It didn't work out. Mom wasn't down with it all. And you always deferred to her. She'd gotten her high school, you didn't. She had a practical sense of people. She didn't want her child living with strangers. You couldn't really argue. S0 those dreams died.

But your larger dreams didn't. I went to school. I distinguished myself. I stood out just like you knew I would. I married that boy you hated, but he distinguished himself too. He's a brilliant artist. He sells paintings all over the world. I still wish you were here. We'd cook you up the feed to end feeds. You never had lamb....Daddy, you missed out, lamb is good!

That being said, you taught me to fight for what's right. You taught me to stand firm in MY truth regardless of opposition. You taught me to walk away from boatloads of money if that money haunts your dreams.

You taught me to accept people. Just people. Wearing a dress and your dick is dangling, okay. You're gay, okay. You identify as something other than society says you are, let's sit down and have a drink and a chat. You didn't care. People were people. Black, White, Brown, Gay, Straight, Questioning, Transgender. You didn't care. It was 1984 and you literally didn't give a shit.

Maybe it was from being a poor Black kid. Maybe you knew something the rest of us didn't. Maybe you were just a simple guy who just knew. Whatever it was, you were cool as hell.

I, like you, accept everyone. Your lack of judgment lives in me and your grandchildren. We're all fierce fighters. We don't stand for any foolishness. We don't stand for hate.

You did that. You made that happen. You made us good people. You made us educated people. Here's your grandson at his university graduation:

The other 2 are great too. They're more private. You'd never have gone in for social media. It would have seemed silly to you.

But I'm still here. And I still miss you every day. You taught me to take people as they were. You taught me that my tears weren't weakness, they were strength, You taught me to value myself and others for what and who they were. You taught me to stand firm and fight for what's right.

And I do all of it.

I think, if you were here, you'd be proud.

I hope so.

You were my first, and maybe only, superhero. I model my life on your example.

Sincerely,

You Daughter

PS: Here's a little music for you from one of your favourite singers that sort of sums it up.