I posted a photo on Facebook that I’d found in a cache of photos in my desk drawer in my office. When you have worked for the same company for 37 years, you find things you probably shouldn’t have at work, but somehow those personal bits and pieces have found their way into your home away from home and lay as buried treasure waiting to be found on a spring cleaning spree. So there it was, this photo of my dad and me, posing sweetly for the Father Daughter dance at my Catholic all girls high school. I was in the 9th grade and painfully socially awkward with a confident sort of insecurity that I could put on a brave face and fake my way through just about anything. I desperately wanted to be normal, like I imagined every other girl at my school was.

My parents had divorced the summer between 6th and 7th grade, and when my mom officially moved out and my dad moved back into our tiny two bedroom, one bathroom house, I was in the school year of grade 7. So I was probably 11 or 12 given what month it was. When my mom left, she left four out of five of her young children, moving out in the middle of the day while we were at school, and taking everything to run a household. Towels, blankets, sheets and bedding, dishes and silverware. For some reason I’ve always thought to be nasty to my dad, she took it all. When we came home from school that day, the ladies of our parish had re-equipped our home with all the essentials, donated from other parish families, and we set about managing our day to day existence with our new motherless routine.

When this happened, my dad was all of 35 years old. He must have experienced the same awkwardness and anxiety, but also possessed the brave face and the insecure confidence to do the best he could. He, too, wanted a sense of normal.

We settled in to life with dad, in the same house, same school, same friends, and same Catholic community. Dad worked hard every day building roads for the county, worked overtime plowing snow in the winter, and coached our Catholic school’s football and baseball teams. It wasn’t always comfortable, but we made it work. When I started highschool, it was important to my dad that I go to Catholic High School, so he arranged a scholarship for me and a campus job cleaning classrooms after school. I had friends, but always seemed to be able to stay on the fringes of a friends group, getting close, but not too close. Looking back, I think I was afraid that the girls would discover I was not like them at all and they would reject me. But I kept my brave face.

I hadn’t intended to tell my dad about the Father Daughter dance. I didn’t think I had a dress that was pretty enough, and the social anxiety associated with mixing my family with school was overwhelming. But my dad caught wind of the event from one of the other fathers with a daughter at my school who lived in our parish. He asked me while the family was eating dinner, “So, what’s with this dance at your school? Are we going?” And so we were – going, and double father daughter dating with his friend who had spilled the beans.

As I’d learn to do many times since then, I gathered up my babysitting money and rode my bike to the tiny mall near our home. I bought what I thought was a suitable outfit and my dad and I had our night. We dined at a restaurant that was very popular in our neighborhood. I had steak, which was a treat beyond special, and we laughed and talked and proceeded to the dance. I don’t really remember if we had a great time or not. I just remember that my dad was there, that he cared, that he tried to bring normal to my highschool world, and that he did the best he could do. I adored my dad. He was far from perfect, but he gave me, and my siblings, everything he knew how to give. Every day, week after week, month after month, and year after year, he was there. Every day I think of him and appreciate him, and miss him terribly.