For many years I've asked women to share their best memory of their dad.  Here are some of my favorites.

 

Airport Hero

“It was the end of our family vacation. I was five years old. We turned in the rental car and were headed through the terminal to the gate. I realized I’d left my doll in the rental car. My mom said, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll get a new one when we get home.’ But my dad scooped me up in his arms. We ran back through the terminal, got on the shuttle bus, and returned to the rental car place. I got my doll back, but the thing I’ll always remember is the thrill of being in my dad’s arms as he was running through that airport. For me.”

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The Meaning of Words

“Every time I didn’t understand a word, instead of moving on to something else, my dad would get out the dictionary. I remember sitting with him and talking about the meaning of words.”

 

Daddy’s Little Helper

“I have a picture on my dresser of me sitting on my dad’s lap, cutting the grass on a riding lawn mower. We did this every summer until I got too big. He lives three hours away now, but if I needed him, he would be here in one.”  

 

Worth Fighting For

“I was being picked on at school, and Dad told me that if it didn’t stop, he would make it stop.” She knew he would stand up for her if she got in some kind of trouble that she didn’t know how to handle herself. After thinking about it for a minute, she said, “I figured if I was worth fighting for, I was worth something.”

 

The Common Thread

Though these stories are happy, that not every deposit in the memory bank is a good one. One woman told me she had no good memories of her dad. Some women told me they were trying to forget their dads. Some answers were sad in their smallness. One woman told me that she was very close to her dad until age 13 when he stepped away from her. Thirty years later, she remembers how that hurt. Where did he go, she wondered? It took them many years to reconnect.

 

After asking this question over the years, I’ve noted a common thread in the positive deposit stories. A simple thing: time and attention. Dictionaries are not that memorable. Mowing the lawn is not that memorable. What is? Time with Dad. It’s not complicated.

 

This realization became the inspiration for the early years of parenting my daughters. Some of the best years of my life. Later these stories became the starting point for The Every Sunday Project.