Father & Daughter

I live in two worlds. One is a world of music. It is populated by poets and rock stars dressed in fabulous silks and spiked leather. It pulsates with pounding drums and fierce guitar riffs; it oozes with the magic of performance. Pages and Plants traverse the streets while Jaggers and Richardses engage in debate. Dylans pen prose while McCartneys sip tea. It is a world in which creativity flows like wine, lush with fresh sounds and ideas, a world to rival that of the romantics. My second world is far less extravagant. It harbors no fantastic tales of excess, no gorgeous groupies dripping with feathered boas or rugged roadies dressed in denim. Instead, it is occupied by the beauty of mundanity, the simplicity of the everyday, and, more importantly, it is overrun with love.

My dad is my best friend. He is my twin flame and my biggest fan, the pillar without whom I could not stand. He has spent nineteen years unwavering in his efforts to give his children the best lives they can imagine, lives abundant with creativity and opportunity. My dad has never given us any idea that we could not be whoever we wanted to be, that we could not do whatever we wanted to do. He is unshakable in his encouragement of every dream we may have, regardless of the scale. If I wanted to build a palace brick by brick with nothing but my own two hands, he’d be beside me applying the mortar. He is the light that guides me, the roots that ground me, and the clouds to keep my head stuck in.

In every birthday card or sentimental note, my dad will repeatedly write how proud he is of the woman I have become. I don’t know if he has ever realized that I wouldn’t be who I am today if it were not for him.

If there is one thing that my dad ensured was a continuous presence in our home, it was creativity. From mountains of play-doh to splatters of paint, cakes decorated to the heavens to puppet shows from behind a blanket, creativity was a way of life. In doing this, my father had also unwittingly made music a consistent quiet presence in our lives, a ghost softly lingering in our peripheral. Whether it was the silly jingles he’d make up about a loose tooth or a hairbrush or the unceasing playing of the Love Boat theme song, music was ever-present. His tastes were expansive, from film scores to Celtic chants, Disney classics to hard rock staples. Be it you were cooking, cleaning, painting, or playing, music was undoubtedly there to accompany you. Faint memories of songs like St. Elmo’s Fire or Thunderstruck seeping through the speakers in his car and into my tiny ears flicker in the back of my mind, of Mr. Blue Sky and Back in Black filling the air while he unknowingly sowed the seeds for the music I was to love.

As I grew, so did my affection for music. My appetite for music was, and is, insatiable. It is constantly expanding to envelop as many genres, decades, and artists as possible. I was soon listening to music older than my father, music that he had grown up with. Artists he’d forgotten about now flooded his central vision by way of his daughter. I think it may have granted my dad a newfound appreciation for the music he was already so familiar with, like hearing them for the first time all over again. He’s become my go-to concert buddy as I drag him to venue after venue, night after night. We dress in our best outfits, ensuring we stand out in the sea of grey old men in t-shirts and cargo shorts who dominate the audience. And no matter what we do, we inevitably arrive early, sitting patiently in our seats and watching as people from all walks of life stroll by until the very last second when the lights finally dim.

I could not ask for a better best friend, concert buddy, or father than the one I have. In a stroke of unbelievable luck, I landed the best dad on the planet. It is without a moment’s hesitation that I can accredit my father for so much of the person I am today. He gave me my sense of humor, my eyes, my love for the arts, and my incomprehensible need to change the world. My guidepost for everything, he is unquestionably my biggest fan and twin flame. He watches as I fill my head with fantasies of extravagant rock stars, from Steven Tyler to Blackie Lawless, George Harrison to Dave Mustaine, but I don’t think he's ever realized that the biggest rock star is him.

Happy Birthday, Daddio.