When I look at this photograph, I see two happy people. I see a little girl who is six and thinks that her dad is the greatest dad in the whole world. The matching outfits say it all. What I don't see when I look at this photograph is the tragedy of the years to come. I don't see the entire loss of admiration and hope for one of this little girl's biggest role models.
~~~
It's a cold winter night. I'm twelve and I'm driving home with my dad back from our local fitness center where I exercise while my dad plays basketball with his friends. He's a doctor and we stop at his office so he can pick up some files to read over for upcoming surgeries. Even though I don't know a lot about my dad's life outside of our home, our family, our unit, I know when someone I've spent almost every day with since I've been born is acting unusual. He's been doing that a lot lately, visits to his office after hours. When he leaves he seems aloof, detached. I always give him a time limit now, thinking that maybe if he spends less time inside he'll act less strange when he gets back to the car. Five minutes is up. Ten. I can't wait anymore because he isn't answering my calls and I'm getting nervous waiting in the chilled, dark car by myself. I go inside the operating room and he's fumbling with a syringe trying to throw it away. "Dad. What are you doing? Dad? Dad!" He only half responds and I get him to come back with me to the car and take me home.
He slides too close to the side of the road more than once and repeatedly tells me it's only a harmless joke to scare me. This joke is less than funny and I decide to stop believing him as one of our neighbor's mailboxes crashes onto the icy road along with his right rear-view mirror.
~~~
I'm seventeen and I haven't heard from my dad in a few weeks. It's been four years since my parents divorced and although I don't see him often, he usually calls to check in with me and express his wishes to see me on a more regular basis at least every other week or so. "Hey, it's Maggie. Is my dad there?" I ask his latest office secretary - they never end up lasting at his office very long, I've heard he's not an easy boss to get along with. I believe it. They tell me he isn't around and that they're at the office on supervisory terms.
Talking to the other half of his on-again/off-again, dysfunctional and tumultuous relationship, enlightens me that my dad was "reprimanded twice in the past five years and had his license temporarily revoked for illegally using drugs on numerous occasions...giving drugs to a patient after hours, using cocaine in his office and injecting himself with an unprescribed painkiller" (WCAX News). How had I not known about any of this? Surely there were clues, but I suppose my parents had worked to go a thorough job of "protecting" me. Turns out, the reason I haven't heard from my dad is because he's in rehab. I don't go to my last class that day. My teacher reprimands me the following afternoon but I just listen and nod because I don't want to use "family problems" as an excuse. It's always sounded stupid to me.
~~~
I'm twenty now and I love my dad. I always have. He pays for my education to the best of his ability in spite of lawsuits and fines for all of his past mistakes. We don't talk much and it doesn't bother me like it bothers him. A lot of who I am is because of my dad: my favourite bands, my love of singing, my low self-esteem, my hypersensitivity. My mom tells me that some day I'll be on good terms with my dad but I'm not counting on it. I love her optimism but sometimes realism is a safer bet.
[Teacher's Notes: It sounds as if there's a good deal more to this story but I'll leave it up to you to tell it or not. Some details that would describe him to a reader would help create a stronger essay.]
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