A spew came forth -- recently, again -- about grown women calling their fathers "Daddy." At the point where I should have stopped reading this particular forum (around the time the theory was forwarded that ignorant Southern women are the main ones perpetuating this "irritating" habit) I instead started thinking about what makes the man who fathered me my Daddy.
I'm 39 years old now, but once upon a time I was 8. I looked very much like my own little freckle-faced, big-eyed, honey-blond daughter. My Daddy sketched pictures of how I would look when I was a teenager and they were dead-on when I was 16. He wrote poetry about my four brothers and me, about God, about nature, about my Mama. He took us to church, to revival, to ice-cream socials and dinners-on-the-ground and sunrise services. He honed our vocabulary and spelling skills by cracking open a huge Webster's after dinner and playing The Dictionary Game, challenging us with fascinating, unfamiliar, beautiful words to define or spell.
Daddy rejected several job opportunities because they would mean relocation to New York or Washington or some other far-off, foreign place, and he didn't want to give up our small-town Southern upbringing, even if it meant more money and status for our family. He traveled a week per month, 10-11 months per year, to make sales calls, but there were always surprises in his suitcase for wee weary ones who accompanied Mama to the Atlanta airport to collect him.
When I was a teenager, we butted heads over whether I should be allowed to play high school baseball. His politics were wrong and his sense of social injustice nonexistent, I thought; still, I appreciated how Daddy managed to overcome his obvious shortcomings to raise five future Jesus freaks.
He drove 40 miles each way to work every day for 30-plus years, but Daddy still managed to coach football and baseball teams, cheer from the stands at band festivals and take us fishing and wading in our little creek. He made me feel precious and loved even when we disagreed, which was often. He has treated Geddy like a fifth son from the time we started dating. He flew home from a business trip in Texas at 5 a.m. when Larry was born prematurely almost 12 years ago.
Daddy and Mama -- Paw-Paw and Nannie -- have 11 cherished grandchildren, for whom they have provided everything from clothes to movies, from Big Wheels to medicine to school supplies. Babysitting is a privilege and not an inconvenience to them. Daddy has taught our children how to make newspaper hats, fixed up old scooters and bikes and built them a plywood biplane with water-bottle propeller. When my brother died unmarried, childless and intestate, Daddy vowed to use any insurance money left over from estate settlement to set up college funds for Ben's beloved "babies," his nieces and nephews.
I was the fourth-born child and the first to earn a degree. I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up because my Daddy was a newspaper man, and I wanted to be a newspaper (wo)man, too. Daddy told me I had a talent from an early age and he never let me doubt myself. He funded most of my college education but was my biggest supporter when I chose to leave the career it provided to raise and educate my own children. "After all, Becca Honey-Honey, that's the most important job you'll have," Daddy said. "Besides, you can write anywhere."
And as it turns out, I was wrong in my teenage judgments about both his politics and his sense of social responsibility. At 72, Daddy now is president of a local civic club, which raises tens of thousands of dollars each year to directly benefit children's charities and programs in our county. He volunteers at the soup kitchen, is a Mason and a certified Methodist lay speaker, sings in the church choir and reads to elementary public school children regularly. He and my Mama have been married nearly 47 years.
Not everyone is lucky enough to have a Daddy, and some of the people who do...well, clearly they don't appreciate their blessings. So I'll continue to address my Daddy by his proper name, regardless of how it sounds to other folks.
He's earned it.
