My Father, The Builder

My father was a builder.

He built cars.
Furniture.
Even buildings.

He didn’t know how to build a life of love.
Or safety.

But he could take a pile of parts
Bring them together into something beautiful.

If there was something he wanted to create but didn’t know how,
he would buy books, study for days, weeks, months
and teach himself.

No one showed him.
He didn’t have a father to guide him.

He built anyway.

—

When I think of my childhood,
there are only three moments where I felt a semblance of connection with him.

Three.

The first, I must have been very small.
Maybe two or three years old.

We were on a bus,
and for some reason he had me sitting on his lap.

I remember his hand reaching up to my head
and playfully tousling the back of my hair.

I remember how unfamiliar that felt.

Not bad.

Just…

Unfamiliar.

Like something my body didn’t have a reference point for.

The second moment lives in a garage.

It was a hot summer day.
Humid. No air conditioning.

He was building a car.

I remember the smell of grease in the air.
His tall, red rolling toolbox.
The shine of his silver tools.
The intensity of his focus.
The sweat on his forehead.
His brown, hazel eyes.
His curly hair.

I stood nearby, watching him carefully.

Afraid of him.
And curious.

At one point, he looked up at me.

Our eyes met through the open frame of the engine.

For a micro-moment

My dad saw me.

He winked.

I didn’t know what to do with that.
I didn’t smile. I didn’t laugh. I just stood still. Suspicious. Eyes wide open.

Playfulness from him was not something I knew how to receive.

But that moment stayed.

The third moment is even smaller.

There was a song, Brown Eyed Girl.

I was very young.

He told me that song was for me.
That I was the brown-eyed girl.

That was it.

No ongoing tenderness.
No consistent care.

Just three brief moments where I felt seen by him.

—

My father was a brutal man.

I have done serious work to heal from what it meant to grow up inside his world.

His explosions.
The unpredictability.
The way my body learned to stay alert, to scan, to adapt
from a very young age.

And over time,
as I worked through the denial,
the minimizing,

Something else began to emerge within me.

The ability to hold what was good about him.

Even if it was very small.

This month was his birthday.

And I found myself asking a question
I never thought I would ask:

How do I honor him?

Not the harm.

But him.

There were not many things my dad seemed to enjoy.

But I remember this.

He liked his cookies.

So I went to the store
and looked for the exact kind he used to love.

I found them.

I bought them.

Not to eat.

Just to hold.

There I was, standing in the middle of the cookie aisle,
holding a bag of cookies in my hands, eyes closed,
trying to smell them.

Trying to find my way back, just for a moment,
to being four years old again.

Watching him eat them
from a safe distance.

Later that day, my son saw the cookies in the pantry.

“I love those cookies. Can I have them?”

“Of course, buddy.”

“When did you start liking them?” I asked, intrigued.

“At school.”

—

My dad died when I was a teenager.

My son never met him.
He has never heard me talk about him.

And yet somehow,
the same cookies found their way to him.

But this time, there was no fear attached.

No tension.

Just my son’s innocent joy.

For most of my life,
I was afraid of becoming like my father.

But I see differently now.

My father was a builder.

And so am I.

But I build differently.

He built things.

I build love.
I build safety.

For me.
For my children.
For those I serve.

I help rebuild what was never supported to begin with.

I do what no one did for him.
I do what no one showed him how to do.

He could have been a great man.
A great dad. A great leader.

But no one ever showed him
that power needed to be protected.
That it needed care.
That it was meant to be used to nurture and protect life,
not destroy it.

These are the three moments I carry:

A hand in my hair.
Our eyes meeting through an engine.
A song that named me.

They were small.

But they were real.

And now, something else is real too.

What once represented distance.
Grief.

My son holds with ease.

The same cookies.

Different nervous system.
Different experience.

I didn’t become my father.

I became what he could not become.

And somehow,
what was once held in survival
has been transformed into something
that can finally be held in joy.

So, here’s to you. Happy Birthday, Dad.