Daddy’s Girl

     I will never forget my father’s eyes when he came home after colon cancer surgery. Chocolate brown with long dark lashes, they were saucer huge. But it wasn’t so much the size of his eyes as it was the look in them. It was haunting. I asked him once whether he’d noticed. “No,” he said. But others noticed, too.

     “Where else will the cancer spread?” his eyes seemed to say. “How bad will the treatment be? Will family and friends treat me differently?”

     His fearful eyes made me want to hug him, though my father is not the hugging kind. Instead, I watched a tape my mother had made, which combined all of our family movies. Old and grainy images of our family, some dating to the 1950s, flitted across the screen. There were plenty of holiday gatherings, good food and drink on the table. Smiling relatives were in abundance. There were images of me as a 4-year-old getting a ride on my father’s shoulders. Daddy’s girl.

     I spoke with my father one morning before my oncology consultation. “Everyone’s cancer is different,” he said. “Listen to what they tell you. Ask good questions. Once you decide on a course of treatment, follow it to the letter. Bring a good book to read if they recommend chemotherapy. You’ll be sitting there quite a while.”

     Thanks, Dad. And thank you for letting me ride on your shoulders.