Presence and Presents

By Sandra Kaye Massey

Throughout the house his presence lingers. The walls and floor space house hundreds of books, so tightly shelved that to pull one is to release several. Books on top of books, books in boxes under the bed, books stored in the closet and in outside sheds, books in baskets, books on available countertops, and all too often the arrival of more books. Daddy gave me his love of reading; I never saw him without a book in his hand, and his own apartment had its own stack of reading material.

Cabinets in my room keep safe a variety of notebooks, sketchpads, file folders, and manila envelopes where my journals, poetry, short stories, writing exercises, essays, reports, sketches, paintings (what few of those exist), and some letters are deposited. Daddy used to tell us fairy tales and fables, inserting our names in the stories, inventing some of his own ("The Hairy Toe"); his own imagination gave strength to mine.

Gathering dust under the bed are old football programs, dating to my elementary school days when Daddy announced on the spur of the moment that we were going to the OSU football game. We used to park on the tiny front lawn of a house now replaced by a convenience store and sat in the corner seats where over the loudspeakers we heard the same names and saw on the field the personages we knew from the radio broadcasts; no matter that they were far away--we were there with Daddy, all of us locked in our shared excitement for the Cowboys. When I went to that college those football players weren't so far away, were up close and personal, and still Daddy and I could share the passions, the added excitement of cheering not just the team but the friends made. Daddy gave me the joy of sharing an event and a happening.

Souvenirs, some with the names of places still readable, some only remembered, are tucked away here and there in hidden corners, are the crumbs of a wandering trail, the following of my father's employment path. His job led him away and led us to Mardi Gras in New Orleans, to the Gettysburg battlefield in Pennsylvania, to the monuments in Washington, D.C., to the Statue of Liberty in New York City. Daddy's life instilled in me the love of travel.

Kept lovingly is a fragile photo album, the black paper brittle and crumbling to the touch, the black and white pictures, publicity shots, and yellowed newspaper clippings showing a young athlete with dark hair and eyes in boxing gloves and trunks, a champion. Daddy was a boxer before he met my mother (and subsequently began to miss workouts and training!). Daddy taught me that my history began before I did.

After he died, while my brother, mother, and I cleaned out his apartment, strangers stopped by to tell us their anecdotes about how Daddy had helped them in some way--- the woman who said she and her belongings had been dumped on the sidewalk by the moving people and no one even offered to help her move in until Daddy came along; the elderly woman who talked nonstop and said Daddy took her to church, visits, the store, on errands, and she repaid him with chicken dinners; the man who said Daddy had been a good man who sometimes helped him in his work; the man who shared Daddy's newspaper and cups of coffee in the early mornings; and the countless others whose faces he likely never saw again: the hitchhikers who found a ride with him, the people on the street whose upturned hands Daddy couldn't leave empty, the children for whom he saved his pennies and nickels. Daddy showed us that we are more than our own self-contained worlds and belong to a bigger universe full of people less fortunate than ourselves.

Daddy was my confidante, the only one in the family who could understand my loner traits, who could see me as a person unto myself beyond "daughter" or "child", and who accepted me as my own unique individual. He loved me for me, not simply because he made me.

I have his eyes, his smile, his bony legs and flat feet; I have his prematurely gray hair. That I was born was a marvel; that I was his firstborn and totally unknown and new gave me "miracle" status I held longer than my sibling. Daddy (with some help from my mother!) gave me life.

To Daddy our birthdays were all the calendar holidays, every special anniversary, every wonder of the world rolled into those two special dates. He burst into the house with his heart as light as a helium-filled balloon, his compliments, encouragements, and endearments showering down like rainbow-colored confetti, his laughter sweeter than the decorated cakes.

I have not wanted to "celebrate" my birthdays since my dad died, have felt a profound emptiness, a vacant chair, an empty plate. But this year I celebrate my dad, whose gifts from the heart keep his presence nearby and will be a part of me always.

Sandra Massey, pictured here as the Sac and Fox tribal spokesperson for Missouri's "Changed Lives" Chautauqua festivals in 2003 and 2004, is the tribal representative for issues covered by the Federal Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act.  She is the principal tribal curator for a Sac and Fox heritage exhibit that will be on display in northeast Missouri sites beginning with the Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum this summer.