Missing Abyss
I miss my dad on my birthday. Every January 19th I have a pang. It would sound way better if I said I miss my dad on his birthday, in February. I do. But not in the way I miss him on the day that marks each trip of mine around the sun.
I don’t remember squat about my birthday observances when I was a kid. I think we traditionally had a homemade cake with some candles on it, but I can’t really say for sure. I might have even had a small party or two, although birthday celebrations then were nothing like the full-scale Broadway productions they have now become. Mostly, a birthday party in the 70s (in Healdton, anyway) had to do with chocolate cupcakes, polka dotted napkins and tiny matching cups that could be purchased at Ben Franklin’s for less than five and a dime, and a game of Pin the Tail on the Donkey taped to the aluminum siding of the carport wall.
As my brother and I got older, birthday gestures from our parents morphed from presents to cards. Mom’s were always (and still are!) a precious sentiment wrapped around a bit of cash. Dad’s were stupid funnies with an extra corny nugget added below the punch line in his signature ALL CAPS. When we moved away from home, mom’s cards kept coming, but somewhere along the way dad’s birthday wishes morphed from a card to a call. A call that was really more a jukebox tune than a phone conversation. I’d say, “Hello”-- the way we do with an uptick at the end-- and seamlessly, as if someone had punched B57, my dad would launch directly into “Happy Birthday.” A carefully curated version he had written just for me.
He sang it traditionally (not messing with the tune the way we often do with it and our country’s anthem.) He sang it slowly, never rushing while clearly pronouncing every word. He also sang it opera style—baritone or high soprano-- (sometimes, if really feeling his oats, alternating stanzas between the two.) It was an impressive performance, to say the least, for one not classically trained in anything other than carry-a-tune. He sang it completely, bulling right through that hitchy part in the middle where most non-singer singers get self-conscious and wither away. Dad’s enthusiasm never wavered as he crooned his way to a flourishing finish of differing octave “many mores.”
On January 19th, I could not wait for the phone to ring.
To be clear, these serenades were silly. Sometimes hysterically so. But they were also thought-out with keen rhymes that tied into something at least semi-relevant to either or both of our lives. When he finished singing, I would simply hear a “click.”
When loved ones are no longer with us, we live with a pervasive void. Sometimes it fills up with rich re-runs, sometimes it’s just a cavern full of empty ache. Missing comes in all sorts of shapes and textures. And none of them feel the same.
The kind of missing that bubbles up on my dad’s birthday is the grown-up kind that’s littered with funeral flashbacks and a poorly put together movie of his last six years of hard days. Fun stuff co-mingles with it, certainly--the legendary Saturday-morning breakfasts, pots and pans clanging well before any reasonable person (especially a teenager) would want to be awake… his golf swing… his fishing tackle… the meticulously organized barn where he ran his side-hustle painting signs. But mostly on dad’s birthday, I grieve that he isn’t here. I ache for all he doesn’t get to see and do.
When I miss him on my birthday, I ache for me not him.
I’ve spent a good bit of my life trying to be a grown-up--even before I was one. I am the self-designated “doer of hard things.” But in my big-girl life, on my birthday—for just a minute—my dad’s singing phone call made me a kid again. It was permission to be silly while also acting as a bookmark. He was who he was and that is who he would always be. Regardless of age--his or mine. My one and only dad.
On my birthday his absence hits me. Right between the eyes.
I don’t know when or how it happened—if my brother took the baton before my dad passed or if he reached back to grab it the following year, but the birthday serenades continue still. My brother’s so much like our dad.
Sometimes when I listen to the rhyme unfolding, between the giggles and my shaking head, I force myself to remember that dad is not the one who’s singing. The pang is as real as ever, but it doesn’t last as long. And for a minute, just like always, I get to be a kid again.