It occurs to me that yesterday’s post might have been a bit confusing for those of you who do not know me personally, and maybe even for some that do. I mentioned Daddy’s grave and just last week I told you Daddy bought me some shoes. Well, neither one of us has lost our minds. Daddy and Daddy are too different men. They are so different, even, that I have been told I say the word differently depending on which I am talking about, and that those who know I have two dads can tell which one I am talking about by the way I say the name. I suppose that’s true, because they feel, smell and taste different inside my head.

My first Daddy is indeed dead, and it was his dad’s funeral we attended Sunday. He died when I was thirteen, but I’d not seen him since I was 6 or 7. It wasn’t what either of us wanted, but it’s the way things happened, and there you have it. You might as well put your past behind you, because you certainly can’t change it. I remember very little about him. A jar of marbles on a dresser, being carried through the snow. I was ….not happy as a child, and my solution to that was to blank my memory. I remember very few events, even up through my teens, and my first miserable marriage. Apparently, I found a trick that worked and I stuck with it. From the small tidbits I do remember, I know he loved me, and that is enough. I can remember things if I am reminded and/or shown pictures, and that is also enough. See, no one takes pictures of bad things, so then all my memories can stay good. That’s my Daddy.

My second Daddy is my mother’s second husband. They married when I was nine, and I have called him Daddy for 31 years. And he truly is my Daddy now. It took a very long time for us to get to that point. A lot of time, and a lot of pure-tee hurt, there is no denying that. He’s a huge man, and his voice is very deep, and I was a very small child, and so I stayed scared of him until I moved away from home. And then when I came home, I guess we both decided that it could and should be different, and so we made it that way. He may have never carried me through the snow so my shoes would not get wet, but I know he loves me just the same. He’s the one who drove me to the university hospital when Drama was life flighted out of our community hospital on a breathing tube. He’s the one who drove me to the eye doctor last year when I thought I was going blind. That’s my Daddy, too.

So there you have it, as well as I can explain it, anyway.