Tag: daughters

Childhood, Fathers Day

My North Star

The Writing Life of Kimberly Nash

When we were kids my Father took my siblings and I, along with our Mother, on many hikes. Some were through woods and pastures, and some were up mountains, and he called each one an adventure. Over the years, I went from fresh-faced, willing participant to sullen adolescent/early teenager, who forged way ahead or dawdled way back so I could feel like I was alone and free of the bonds of my family. Eventually, I became an absentee teenager-with-a-job and friends who were more interesting to me at the time, and I begged off as many of those outings as I could. I had other, more interesting adventures to attend to. 

Fast forward 18 years or so.By then I was a parent, with two adolescent boys and a lot more perspective. It was January when I not so casually suggested to my father that we take a hike in the White Mountains. Now, the one thing I never got to do was hike alone with Dad. The closest I came to expressing my desire was buying him a “50 Hikes in NH” book when I was a teenager, and pointing out the Lonesome Lake overnight hike and saying “That one looks nice.”  Unfortunately, he was not a mind reader and I was not the most communicative teenager, and so, when we did hike it, the whole family went and I was probably 50% sullen and I think the most communicative I got was writing to myself, in my journal. Dad was up for the challenge, and we decided to go up Mt. Lafayette in July, hike up ,stay at Greenleaf Hut, then take the Franconia Loop Ridge Trail, and the Bridal Veil Falls trail down on our way out. I remember Dad looking me in the eye and saying “You’ll have to make sure you’re in shape for it.” To which I replied “Oh don’t worry about me!” A flash of my teenage self emerged. How many times would Dad say “You guys are marshmallows!”when we lagged behind on the trails. I’d show him. 

I spent the whole spring that year riding my bike and running like a madwoman and dropped about 10 lbs just to prove I was no marshmallow and be ready for that hike. The day arrived and Dad picked me up and we drove to the trailhead parking lot. Being Dad, he had to go through my pack to ensure I wasn’t carrying anything unnecessary, to ease the weight I was carrying. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel a little irritated at this intrusion and what I perceived as his doubt about my fitness level, aka marshmallow quotient.

 He held up a can of Diet Pepsi. “You’ve got water, you don’t need this.” 

“The Pepsi STAYS.” I growled. Fortunately for both of us, he shrugged and put it back.

We were geared up  like twins; hiking boots, knee socks, shorts, tee shirts, bandanas around our heads, water bottles dangling from the packs. Up the trail we went. The day was magnificent. Down in the valleys it was hot and humid, up on the leafy green trails the trees shaded us,  sunlight poked in hear and there, dappling everything, and the air smelled mossy and clean. We didn’t talk a whole lot, but the silence was companionable. This part of the trail didn’t hold much of a view, but occasionally the trees would part and we could see the view across the way. Dad had me stop at one of these views, so he could take a photo of me. I got a little dizzy looking out, but it passed and I didn’t think much of it at the time. We arrived at the hut by late afternoon, and had time to sit at a picnic table and relax. Later on the crew made a hearty dinner of beef stew and put on a little skit for the guests. Dad and I wandered over to the guest book, where we looked up an entry we had made back in 1977, from a family hike. It was gratifying to write a new, updated entry and add our two names to the book. Later on, I laid awake in the communal bunk area where the women slept, listening to some of them snoring loudly.I wondered if Dad was asleep.  I was really excited for the next day, and the Ridge trail, and looked forward seeing the Falls on the way down. 

We started out after breakfast and headed to the beautiful Franconia Ridge Loop Trail. We stopped to look at the expanse of the trail before us. The ridge trail crosses three mountain peaks, and is about 8 miles long. On that beautiful clear July day, we could see the ridge in its entirety. The trail is a narrow, rocky area, that drops off on either side into a 3000 foot expanse of dark green mountainside. The sky was a brilliant blue without a single cloud and it went on forever. It was beautiful, and terrifying at the same time. I took a deep breath and followed Dad onto the trail. We picked our way over and around rocks, and I tried, I really did. I tried to breathe, and look at and appreciate the view. Each time I made the mistake of looking down off to the side of the trail, my heart raced a little faster and my head felt a little lighter. I said nothing to my father, who walked ahead of me, confident and straight backed. After a little while, I could barely speak. He would talk and I would give one word responses, all the while resisting the urge to freeze and curl up into a little puddle of melted marshmallow. Gradually, I was crawl-walking, bent way over and scrambling over rocks, hand over hand. I wanted to glue myself to the trail.

Dad stopped and asked “Are you ok?” 

“Um, no, not really. I’m afraid of heights!” I had to admit it. I am good at hiding a lot of fears, but my sheer will was no match for this one. I felt like a failure. Defeat leaked in tears from the corner of my eyes.

“Take my hand.” 

I looked up, and there in front of me was my Father’s hand. He was still facing forward, holding his arm behind him. 

“You can do it, I’ll help you.” 

I grabbed his hand for dear life, and this is how we traversed the 1.7 miles of narrow ridge trail between Mt. Lafayette and Little Haystack Mountain that day. Dad walking, holding my hand behind him, me clutching the hand and half crawling, half duckwalking across the ridge. The whole time I glued my eyes to our entwined hands, listening to the voice of my childhood, the one that always knew what to do and say to get me through any hardship. The hand that held mine as we skipped down my childhood sidewalks together, the hand that brushed my long hair in the evenings when I was 7 years old, the hand that squeezed mine the day my first son was born, and the hand that would always be there for me in years ahead, during good times and bad. 

When I finally was able to walk upright again, we finished the ridge trail and headed down the Falling Waters trail. Once again the trees embraced us in their shady arms, and the steep views were hidden from us. The trail was not for marshmallows; it was very rocky and steep. We were both silent as we focused on keeping our footing, balance and slowing the speed of our descent. Partway down, Dad slipped and fell on the rocks. Instantly, I was at his side, and this time it was me offering my hand, and lifting him up. He was uninjured,  a little embarrassed, but we both smiled. 

“I’m impressed with your fitness,” he said. “I’m having a hard time keeping up with you!” I glowed at the praise. 

We stopped to rest at one of the beautiful falls that run parallel to the trail. We took off our boots and socks, and sat on a rock, dangling our feet in a pool. The falls roared to the left of us. Surreptitiously, I reached into my pack and slipped out the Diet Pepsi. I wedged the can between two rocks in the ice cold water. After a while, I removed the can and popped the top. The bite of the soda on my parched tongue was something I can still feel today. I offered the can to Dad, he took a sip and closed his eyes. 

“Boy does this hit the spot!” He looked at me, brown eyes shining and smiled again. “Good thing you didn’t listen to me and brought it.”  I smiled and looked over the water. I could have stayed there forever.

We reached the car a few hours later, ravenously hungry. “Let’s get pizza, I know a place,” Dad said. We wolfed down a whole pizza before driving home. 

I had dreams of doing a hike like that once a year with Dad. But, life goes on and gets in the way. We never did another overnighter. In all honesty, I don’t think we could have recaptured the magic of those two days if we tried. And, we did go on to do many other things, as family does. I could write a hundred essays more about our hikes, walks, snowshoeing and skiing adventures that have happened since. And maybe I will one day. 

Until then, this one’s for you Dad. You are my North Star. Nobody in this world will ever fill your shoes. Thank you and happy Father’s Day!

Childhood, Uncategorized, Writing

My Other Biggest Fan

The Writing Life of Kimberly Nash

D14835AB-9C1A-4F7F-99F6-170AA648C87EWhen I was born, my dad was serving in the US Navy. One of my earliest memories is of my mom singing to me:
“Bell bottom trousers,
Coat of Navy Blue,
My Dad’s a sailor
And he loves me too.
When you get married
And have a family,
You’ll dress your kiddies in sailor’s dungarees!”

I think I will always be able to conjure up her beautiful voice and those sweet words until the day I die. Mom always claimed she cannot carry a tune, but I think she has the most mellifluous voice in the world. Every day, Mom would wake us up with her sweet greeting; “Rise and shine!” I was a grumpy, moody child. Never a morning person.I would grumble back from under the covers, “I’ll rise but I won’t shine!” I felt wickedly clever for saying that. To her eternal credit, It did not deter her from her daily greeting. Every night at bed she hugged and kissed us and tucked us in saying “Good Night, sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite!” Always in the same cheerful tone. She could have had the worst day of her life, but would never let it show to us kids. Her love for her children was and still is unconditional, and as consistent as the sunrise.

My early years were spent in a small village in upstate New York. You could walk to school and I did; every day to Kindergarten then home to Mom and peanut butter sandwiches and milk on a TV tray in front of my favorite cartoons. Mom and I and my brother walked downtown and had milkshakes and ice cream sodas at the local lunch counter. Every day in summer I could play outside to my heart’s content and Mom was always there to run to for comfort, food, and hugs and kisses as needed. I had a pretty normal childhood spent running in and out of a slamming squeaky screen door and being told “in or out, one or the other!” We could spend hours buying penny candy and melted popsicles with nothing but a dime at the corner store all summer. I recall ice skating at the local park down the street in winter. Mom stuffed the toes of her own childhood skates with newspaper so I could wear them. We greased the blades with Vaseline and polished the leather with white shoe polish. I remember the pride I felt that I could fit into Mom’s skates.I imagined her laughing and skating with her friends, an image I took with me every time I circled around that iced-over lot at the end of the street. Those ice skates were more valuable to me than any brand new store bought pair of skates could ever have been.

I was never a girly girl who welcomed dresses and pink hair ribbons. If Mom had hoped for that kind of daughter, she sure hid it well. I was the kid who tore up her new winter coat sledding under a barbed wire fence and barely ducking in time to avoid getting clotheslined from it. My buster browns were permanently scuffed, my permed and set hairdos went frizzy, and my clothes never stayed clean very long. When we moved to the country, Mom was the one who set me free to roam the lush pastures and cool, green forests and creeks every single day. I would return home grass stained, sweaty and brown as shoe leather, and happy as a clam. If my dad nurtured my love for adventure and animals, my mom was the one who sent me out into that world, unfettered and free to live out those adventures and loves. I don’t think I ever realized her part in giving me my independence and letting me decide who I was, without judgement or restriction.

Just because she was cheerful and loving does not mean she was or is a pushover. My Dad always said my mother is the best judge of character he knows, and it is entirely true. Woe to those who hurt the ones she loves, and if Mom doesn’t like someone, which is rare, you know that person has a very serious character flaw.
When I was at the lowest point in my life, pregnant, a single mom to a two year old, alone and afraid, not knowing where I would live the very next day, I called her. I hadn’t told her much about my dilemma when she interrupted me with the two most beautiful words I have ever heard: “Come home.” She knew I would never ask. This allowed me to safely prepare for a new life with my two wonderful boys. It probably saved my life. She was a believer in tough love, to my eternal benefit, but she also knew when I truly needed her. No matter where I go, Mom is always home to me.

Mom has done so many things in her lifetime. She worked retail, at a local department store when I was in high school. Her sense of fashion and style sure helped me out, since I had no interest in such things. Thanks to her, I didn’t go to school looking like a bumpkin. I can still remember showing up at the breakfast table dressed for work, barely awake only to have her order me to remove my skirt or dress so she could properly iron it. “You are NOT going out looking like that.” And I wasn’t the most grateful teenager for all her attempts to make me presentable. She also was an aerobics instructor, and ran programs for the YWCA. She wrote grants and obtained funding that benefitted a lot of people. She hiked mountains – she and my dad took my sons to hike up Mount Washington when they were very young. She is an artist – she creates the most beautiful quilts I have ever seen! She is a merciless Scrabble player. All the grandkids know they can truly brag if they can beat their Grammy. Ultimately, I think it is her role as a Grandmother which she cherishes the most. She is the proudest, and most loving grandmother on the planet. Not many Grammies can boast that their teenage grandsons invite themselves to dinner and to play Scrabble. My boys did that, and to this day they travel the 5 hours up to Maine to spend time with their grandparents, as do all of their children and grandchildren.

We are so blessed to have you for our Matriarch, Mom. I love you a bushel and a peck. Happy Mother’s Day!

 

Childhood, Uncategorized, Writing

My Biggest Fan

The Writing Life of Kimberly Nash

For My Dad on his 78th birthday

When I was born, my father was serving on a Naval ship docked in Boston Harbor. A telegram announced my birth. He ran excitedly around the ship spreading the happy news to his shipmates. Finally, someone asked him “Is it a boy or a girl?” He stopped in his tracks and said, “I don’t know!” He was so excited he didn’t read the telegram completely. He had to return to retrieve it to find out he had a daughter.He was 20 years old.

I love this story, because it is really fun to picture a handsome, dark eyed smiling young sailor hopping with excitement at my arrival on this planet. I also love it because it truly didn’t matter to him which gender I was. He just loved me. He has always loved me for ME.

When I was small, he made up wonderful bedtime stories, starring ME, with a cast of animals in supporting roles. I was the rescuer of baby Robins who fell out of their nests, mending them with nothing more than mercurochrome and a band aid, and sending them back home to mama bird, with a dropper of water and a worm for the road. I couldn’t wait to hear what wonderful things I would do next. Dad would brush my long hair, and tell me I was Pocahontas , his Indian princess. He always had a white hanky handy to dry tears or daub at a scraped knee or elbow.  These are some of my earliest memories.

Dad did what lots of Dads do; he stayed up late on Christmas Eve, putting together an elaborate cardboard house for us kids to inhabit on Christmas morning. Until one day in Summer, when my brother and I discovered if you collapsed the cardboard on the garage floor you could run and leap belly first and slide a long way. This is what poor Dad found us and the neighbor kids doing when he drove in the driveway from a long day’s work. All his hard labor flattened and trod upon by an army of kids, led by me. One day I spied Dad through my bedroom window when I should have been asleep one summer evening. He was walking a battered navy blue bicycle up the driveway and into the garage. On Christmas Day that year, I never connected the shiny, red two wheeler bike equipped with training wheels glistening under the sparkling Christmas tree with that junker he brought home that coincidentally, I never saw again. He pulled us in wagons, on sleds, gave us hundreds of piggy back rides. He once entertained us by chewing an entire pink bubble gum cigar and blowing a bubble as large as his head. We sat with our mouths hanging open in awe, until the bubble burst all over his face, getting stuck in his five o’clock shadow. Pink shreds fluttered from his eyebrows which were raised in arched black and pink caterpillars of disbelief and shock. There was gum in his hair, and on his earlobes. My brother and I burst into hilarious belly laughs that followed him as he ran for the bathroom and a warm wash cloth to clean the sticky mess off. He was a pretty good sport about it all. (We were never allowed to have a whole bubble gum cigar; we were “too little”. After that, we never really wanted to, either.)

He taught me how to read before I started school. I learned to love stories, a gift that has lasted a lifetime. How I loved going to the library, choosing a book, usually about animals, and proudly adding it to my book list every week. My love for reading got me into trouble when I started school. Very often, I finished my lessons early in class, so I could read my latest book choice under the desk. It often appeared I wasn’t paying attention when called upon in class. The truth was, I knew the material, but read the lessons faster than the others, and was deeply engrossed in my stories or daydreams and didn’t hear the question being asked. As a result, a nun accused me of cheating in second grade, when I got a 100% on a test. She was convinced I couldn’t possibly know the answers because I was always daydreaming. I was horrified to take home a paper sporting a giant red F. I tried to erase it in class, and Sister Regina snatched the paper back, and emblazoned it with a larger red F and a note home that my dad had to sign the failed paper. Dad read the note, while I looked down at my shoes in shame. He met my eyes. “Did you cheat?” He asked. I shook my head no. “I believe you,” he said. Three very powerful words. We went to the school and he assured that nun I was perfectly capable of passing that test on the spot, verbally if she would like proof that I did not cheat. I got my 100% and my dignity back. Dad has always believed in me.

Dad encouraged me to achieve. He quizzed me on what I wanted to be when I grew up. He talked at length about his dream of me going to college,  ever since I can remember. This clearly meant the world to him, to give me this wonderful opportunity. I told him I wanted to be a Navy nurse. I wanted to “save the soldiers in Vietnam.” I thought they were “fighting the Germans”  A little confused? Yes. No matter, Dad thought that was just swell.

Dad made everything an adventure. New places were to be explored and enjoyed. We hiked, we boated, we swam the Finger Lakes, and we roamed every corner of each place we lived. He encouraged me to love music, and to sing. I could belt out Patti Page’s “Cross Over the Bridge” like a nightclub singer at age 7. Although, I confess, I always confused the words “fickle past” with “pickerel bass” And I wondered why someone would go fishing and leave their “Pickerel Bass” behind them. Speaking of fishing, Dad also taught me how to fish, something I enjoy to this day. He even forgave me for using up all of his rubber worms, as I could practically hear the real worms screaming in pain as they writhed when put on hooks. I couldn’t bear it, and he understood. (However, for the record, it was my sister, not I, who lost his cherished “Red Eyed Warbler” lure. He forgave her too.)

It wasn’t all sunny days and fishing trips between us. We both have regrets; this I know, because we have since spent many wonderful hours snowshoeing in the woods of Maine, talking everything out amongst the tall pines of what we call The Enchanted Forest.  I am so grateful I had the chance to mature enough to make things right between us! We had our share of differences and angst during my teenage years. I know I broke his heart many times. I quit college after a month. What a bitter disappointment that had to be. And how frightening it must have been for him to watch as I made bad choices and stuck with them long after I should have. There were periods of time I stayed isolated from family trying to figure things out for myself. He never abandoned me. When I needed help the most, he and my mother were always there. After my children were born, things began to change. I righted my ship, and eventually sailed back to home port. Dad was a wonderful role model for my boys. He took them hiking in the White Mountains, and he and my mother took them up Mount Washington. They spent summer days on the Maine shore. They played cutthroat games of Scrabble, (and still do) In Winter, Dad took them to the slopes and taught them how to ski. They went animal tracking in the woods, and identified leaves and plants. He was always there for them as much as he was for me. He taught them things a father would teach. He filled a great void in their lives.

Dad can get me through anything. If I close my eyes, I can feel his hand on my elbow at the graveside of my children’s father; his hand over mine as he got me across the Ridge trail in the White Mountains when my fear of heights had overtaken me and had me frozen in place. When asked, he shared his wise counsel when I had my own issues with the daunting task of parenting two very independent teens. I remember wondering just when he got so darned smart. He shined the light when I couldn’t see the forest for the trees.

We always want to please our parents, even when we think we don’t. I will never forget that day in 1979 when I called home, crying, on a pay phone from college, after barely a month in, telling my family I planned to quit. I just wanted to go home. My father tried everything to convince me to stay. He was hurt, angry and probably extremely worried for my future. Nothing he could say would change my mind. So, he came and got me, and brought me home. And spent the next thirty years praying, hoping, watching, most likely at times, crying and worrying, sometimes celebrating and above all, loving me. The proudest moment of my life was the day I finally walked for my college diploma, at age 47. My boys were there, my husband, and my family. But the person I searched for first in the crowd was Dad. There were he and Mom, beaming, as if they always knew this day would come. They had more faith than I did.

What more can a person ask for in a father? Someone who from the start loves you for who you are, who always stood in the wings waiting to catch you, and who always, always is ready to celebrate you. My biggest fan. There is nobody on Earth who could do it better.

Happy, Happy birthday DAD. Thank you for loving me. And by the way you may have noticed I left out a certain story involving you, an umbrella, a herd of rogue cows and a school bus full of kids. This time. 