She drove up closer to the driveway he had described over the phone, her stomach still in knots. How silly, she thought, that the thought of seeing her own father would make her so nervous, however it had been almost two years. She questioned in her mind whether he realized this or not. She sees the sign and secretly hopes to not find the room number he was residing in. For reasons she does not understand, the cell phone call to ask him which room it was again was a big ice breaker and alleviated the long shaky walk to the door awaiting an opening. He stood outside and there was no more worry or wonder about what he may look like now.

The initial greeting was casual. There was a hug and a kiss on the top of her head as if nothing had ever gone wrong. There was more meat on his bones than the last hug that took place after picking him up from the county jail. He had said the food was terrible and his body told the same story. An unwillingly retired electrician, he was now the “pit master” at the local barbecue joint, a sort of job she had never imagined him having in all the years of her life. It was due to several nerve and spine problems that limited him physically to the point of having to give up the thing he most enjoys doing. This was a tiny notch in the ever expanding belt of grievances he had accumulated throughout the years, however still instilled more pity in her toward him and allowed for a bit of forgiveness if nothing else.

The knots in her stomach began to loosen and they talked as if they talked quite frequently. She had decided to put the past on the back burner for now and for a brief moment, this made her feel content. There were no words of advice given or traditional father-daughter gab that she imagined other people must have somewhere. These things were replaced by barbeque, beer and the simplicity of the nearby river to which they both agreed to go. They talked until sunset while taking in the rather sudden breeze that passed over them and the waterfalls nearby. “Look at how the wind blows the water backward and creates a mist”, he said. He suggested this would make for a rather awesome picture if either of them actually had the skill to walk across the edge of the slippery moss-laced falls and capture it with the camera she had brought along. She settled for a picture of him with the magical mist in the background instead.

She focused in on him for a bit. His hair, which had turned unfamiliar shades of gray and white crept out from a baseball cap and made her feel equally nostalgic and old. His rough, callused hands that seemed to tell the story of his tragic existence in every crease, scar and scab. His easygoing and humble sense of humor which she had missed so much was sparking better memories of her childhood. An inside joke or two was exchanged and for the first time in several years, she felt as if she had been missing something so important. All the things she had built up inside herself, her secret vendetta to him, started to fade gently and she started to see him as a man rather than just her father. A man struggling so desperately to survive off the scraps of bridges he had burnt along the way. She felt no anger or ill will toward him, but rather empathy and understanding. Some infinite cloud of unsaid professions lingered above them as they hugged goodbye.

She felt a rush of overwhelming accomplishment as she drove away. She had grown up. She knew pain and struggle. She understood again what love could be. She shed a single tear as she pulled away and held back the pool that remained settling in her eyes. And she promised herself she wouldn’t cry. Not for those reasons. She remembered a more dominant version of him telling her as a child when she wept to”stop whining or I will give you something to cry about”..And did he ever.