My Father

    Very few people can say that they've had the opportunity to take a cross country road trip with their father and sister. Even fewer people can claim that they went on a cross country road trip with their father and sister to pick up an above ground pool. The drive was twenty-nine hours with absolutely no traffic, stops, or food breaks, so the three of us had a lot of together time to look forwards to.

    On the drive up to Washington State, somewhere in New Mexico, my sister and I jokingly suggested that we should listen to the Hamilton soundtrack from beginning to end. We laughed at the idea, knowing our dad would loudly protest since musicals have never been his thing. He surprised us both when he readily agreed. Not only did he agree to the idea, he enthusiastically agreed to listen to two and a half hours of theatre music. My sister quickly hit play before he could change his mind. For the next two and a half hours, my sister and I sang, rapped, and explained Hamilton to my father. He asked questions at random intervals, nodded along to the beat, and did not utter a single word of complaint the entire time. It was awesome. For my sister and me, at least.

    When we reached Utah at three am, my dad asked if we could switch drivers. He'd been driving for around fifteen hours at that point and was long overdue for a break. At three am, we swapped, and he said, already half-asleep, "Wake me up in two hours, okay? Two hours. You need to sleep, too." After that, he was gone. The man didn't even shift positions once. He even snored a little. At four forty-five in the morning, I could no longer keep my eyes open. He woke up, swapped without complaint, and then it was my turn to pass out for the next few hours.

    In Idaho, I'd never heard one man make as many hay jokes as my dad did. He started with slightly acceptable jokes about "what did one farmer say to the other? Hay!" But then they quickly devolved to him just pointing and shouting "HAY!" whenever we passed one of those piles, chuckling quietly to himself. It was a sight to behold. I've never seen a grown man so tickled at the sight of hay before. To be honest, I will probably never again see a grown man so tickled at the sight of hay. It was one of those surreal moments you know you'll never experience again.

    On the way back home, we were all getting slightly bored, and my sister pulled up a list of questions on her phone. These ranged from questions like 'what is some aspect of parenting you'd do differently with your children', to 'what is your least favorite thing about the people in the car'. These questions got us through nighttime and the dull parts of Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas. 

    With my father, what you see is not always what you get. He's not two-faced or duplicitous in his interactions with people, he simply realizes that different people require different aspects of his personality. He can be hard-headed and curmudgeonly with his father, fun and youthful with my younger siblings, intellectual and gentle with my mother, funny and personable with his friends, strict and business-like with coworkers and employees. My father is a man of so many facets and personalities, and quirks. He is wickedly smart, can be brutally honest, and is passionately loving. But he also has his faults.

    Asking all of these questions, and hearing him answer honestly, really changed a lot about the way I see him. Yes, he's my father, and everything that goes into that, but he's also a business owner, a boss, a friend, a husband, a human being. I no longer only see him through the lens of a father, but I can also see him through the eyes of someone who saw him laugh hysterically at hay jokes, who made the split-second decision to take the scenic route, who ate at restaurants that weren't his favorite because my sister loves them, who slept for less than two hours so I could sleep, who laughed with me when my sister slipped in the mud.

    There's nothing more humbling than driving across an incomprehensibly vast country in a truck, hauling an above ground pool with your sister and father, laughing your butts off about nothing at all. It's fun, real, and raw. And I don't think I can recommend it highly enough.