Valentine’s Day draws nigh, and stores will soon fill with an anxious crush of shoppers in search of roses, chocolate, tacky pajamas and stuffed monkeys — inexplicably a popular item this year. I’m unconcerned. I know all about this festival of love. It never disappoints me.
Before I peeked into the cardboard mailbox I crafted in third grade to receive punch-out Valentine cards from my classmates, before I let the strawberry-and-whipped-cream pancakes my mother served for breakfast every year on Feb. 14 melt in my mouth, before I weathered my first crush, ventured out on a date or received a bouquet of roses from a suitor — I fell in love.
At an age inaccessible to my memory, my father won my heart. And my heart was in safe hands.
I know this because I’ve seen the photographs. There I am in my terrycloth sleeper, rigid with glee as my father tickles my chin. He’s a young seminary student with a buzzcut, thin from sleep deprivation and hard work at the Johnny Mitchell factory where he loads trucks to support his family and pay his tuition. The camera has captured a moment of joyful intimacy snatched from the jaws of Hebrew language study. I was, it’s clear, supremely happy.
Other pictures document the love story: Dad daubing oil paint onto the canvas while I labor over my own small painting; a cloth-covered teepee constructed in the basement, an eagle feather for my hair — it didn’t matter that I was a girl, he said, I could claim the noble ornament; the haircut he admired in spite of my glum disappointment; a snapshot taken before a school program. I look a bit anxious, but my father sits next to me, apparently unconcerned about potential failure. He’s there to hear his daughter sing.
I no longer recall the nervousness, nor do I remember how I performed. What shines in my memory is the fact that my dad was there at the track meets, the musicals, the plays, the end of summer camp and the first day of a new job.
He was there, too, to drive me home the day of my divorce. He followed up by taking me to lunch once a week as I started over. He sent me flowers on my ex-anniversary. When a new sweetheart declared he wanted to marry me, Dad chuckled: “Of course he does. Anybody smart would want to.” Fathers are the best answer to the question “How can you mend a broken heart?” They’re also the best way to avoid all the brokenness in the first place.
Presence is a good way to start; perhaps it’s the only way to start. Yet it’s not sufficient in itself. A father snoozing in the recliner, remote control in hand, bears no resemblance to the knight in shining armor little girls envision when they think of love. Viewer Dad needs to rouse himself and get involved. Then he needs to speak. To be a silent spectator is better than showing up to yell from the bleachers — but a word of encouragement is even better.
A man’s power to shape his daughter’s heart presents a paradox. We do not live in a culture designed to cultivate true sensitivity in men. That’s a shame because fathers are able to subtly reassure, affirm and hearten their girls without saying much at all.
My Grandpa Schultz — an articulate man and animated preacher — was not given to flowery speeches. Yet the time he said of his daughter, “Ruth plays piano the way I hear the music in my head,” my mother’s heart blossomed. The compliment glowed in her memory, word perfect, to recount to her own children.
Years later, it was music that brought her to the church where she met my father. He’d arranged for a men’s quartet to perform; the college sent a women’s trio with a gifted accompanist.
“She was so beautiful,” he recalls. She knew how to be at home in her beauty, because her father treasured her.
“She was so intelligent,” he tells me, remembering how they visited at the back of the sanctuary and got so wrapped up in conversation they missed the entire potluck dinner. A virtuous girl, she wasn’t afraid to talk to men because her father had protected and loved her. When he paid visits to the inmates at the state prison, he brought his daughter along to provide music; she was perfectly safe in her father’s company.
“She played the piano so well,” my dad says. Who knows what obstacles might have separated them, had not my grandpa’s Ruthie kept playing that piano the way her daddy heard it in his mind?
Every love story starts with a father. When daughters hear the words as girls — you are important; you are beautiful; you are mine; you are loved — they hear true as women. They recognize the real thing when it comes along. Echoing emptiness, on the other hand, leaves the heart uninhabited, vulnerable to random damage.
The craving for father-love is so strong, a girl never gets over it. And that’s good news. It means it’s never too late for imperfect dads, who, after all, are the only kind on the planet.
Like all men, flawed fathers have a tendency to do their best and still miss the mark. Valentine’s Day is no different. That can result in gifts like wilted roses, melted chocolate, nothing at all, or, possibly worse than nothing, stuffed monkeys.
None of that really matters, though, when you have a father who loves you. I know, because I do.
