My father’s book

When I went home for the holidays I saw a book sitting in a pile of stuff by the foot of the sofa. I can’t remember the exact name, but it was something like, “How to Father a Successful Daughter.”

I am my father’s only daughter. And as I stared at the cover I wondered if my life’s upbringing was influenced by the words written on those pages.

I never opened it. Once I picked it up and felt it in my hands wondering if my father had actually ever read it. I wondered if his hands had been where mine were, if they had flipped the pages. If his nose had smelt the pages as I was doing now.

What was my father like when he read it? Much thinner I assume. Did he read it when I was a baby? Before I was born? Or did he wait until I was a young pre-teen about to give him hell?

Did he even read it at all? Perhaps it was a gift and he never even looked at it. The book was worn. The pages were yellowed and there were creases in the cover. I did not recognize the author.

I only touched it once. To me, was like this forbidden object I had unintentionally discovered. Did he leave it there on purpose for me to see? I felt as if reading it would unlock a flood of emotions I was unequipped to handle.

I am my father’s daughter.

Our noses protrude from our faces in the same shape. Our hair becomes oily after a day. Our eyebrow hair grows strangely long, although I keep mine in check while his grow freely. Our eyes are dark and beady, our arms are full of hair. We are dark in the Texas sun.

In every way, I am him.

Our quiet, calm demeanor shows through in times of stress. We are frugal, but not tight. Ridiculous and silly, my father’s jokes have passed their way down to me. We are strong and stubborn, never wanting to admit we are wrong until pushed so far up against a wall we have no choice.

My father is my hero. I love him in a way unparelled to any other love I’ve ever felt. Growing up, I wanted to be just like him. I read, because he read. I ate graham crackers and milk, because he did.

He use to braid my hair as I watched Barney, and I always cherished those moments because no one else’s father did their hair — that and my mom’s long fingernails would stab my scalp when she braided.

Every morning I stared at that book. When I sat on the sofa to watch TV or put on my shoes, there it was — staring back at me. I was afraid of what was inside.

If he read it, the book told my father how to raise a “successful” daughter. The book mocked me. It made me question if I was successful in my father’s eyes. I wanted to make him proud to have me as his daughter, because if I am proud of anything in my life, it is of having him as my father.

Was he reading it a second time trying to discover what he missed? If the book said, “Do this and your daughter will turn out like this?” — did I actually turn out that way? I feared I failed to become everything that book said I would.

I hated that book.

And yet I love it. I love the man that most likely read it because it shows just how hard he tried to be a good father, and how much he cared. Did he ever doubt himself? Did he read that book because he didn’t think he could raise a successful daughter without it?

If I grow up to be half the parent my father is, I will have been successful. I will buy a book about “How to Mother a Successful Son/Daughter” because maybe it’ll teach me what he learned. I’ll make my husband read one so that my daughter will be twice as lucky as me with her own father and grandfather there to raise her.

My father’s book is there, haunting me from thousands of miles away. Both haunting me and humbling me. I understand more of who I am than ever before after seeing that book. Not because I believe my father read it and did everything the author said. But because I know now that he once felt unsure. And for a daughter who has always seen her dad so collected and so assured of his actions, for a daughter who has always tried to be like her dad — that is meaningful.

My father’s book has shown me that even the most formidable person on the outside, has doubts on the inside. But doubts do not define you. It is how you face them that do. The book is proof of that. My father is proof of that.