Daddy Horace

By Diane Collins

He was in my life from 3 years old, Daddy Horace. My first clear memory of him I was around 6 years old and at Jones Beach. Dad took turns taking each of us out into the water. We had to wait for him to finish his swim first. Had I known about Greek myths I would have thought of him as Poseidon or Neptune. He looked like one of the sea gods coming out of the water, with all muscle and strength.
My arms were around his neck as he swam. We were out where the water swelled before it turned into a wave. We never got caught in a wave. Silence, created by distance and the tight swim cap that covered my ears, sealed us in our own world. People on the beach looked tiny. I felt like nothing could knock Dad down, break him—not all that water, not the waves. Nothing.
Dad was smart as he was strong. Evenings, through my years at Holy Rosary School he helped me with my homework. He’d finish his dinner and come upstairs to sit at the kitchen table. I was ready and waiting with troublesome problems. He sat across from me, patient. He’d leaned forward and said, “Let’s see what we’ve got.”
Adding and subtracting fractions was a problem for me, long division too. Moving decimals, borrowing from the next number, converting. All of it was a problem. Dad worked on each one with me. He explained the math in a way the nuns did not.
Next morning, when the teacher asked for a volunteer to go to the blackboard and write how they solved the problem, my hand was in the air. Homework Dad helped with was always correct. It didn’t matter if it was Geography, History, Math, or diagramming a compound sentence for English.

Parent-teacher’s night! Dad showed up and joined the parents in the hallway waiting their turn with the teacher. He folded his arms across his chest and asked with make-believe seriousness, “What kind of report am I going to hear?’
“A good report,” I said I wanted Dad to see my desk, sit down, and look at my papers.
He was the first person I made a gift, a belt holder from a cardboard tube. I colored it with crayons and looped a ribbon through it. I gave it to him for Father’s Day. I told him he could put his belts on it and hang it in his closet. He laughed that big laugh.
I was a reader. It was fun to read at night after, I thought, everyone in the house was asleep. I tiptoed down the hallway and into the bathroom, with my book, that time, 1001 Arabian Nights. I closed the door, switched on the light, and sat cross-legged on the floor. I was enjoying my book when I heard a knock on the door. ”Diane, enough. Bed,” said Dad.
Dad was there to pick us up from dance lessons and piano lessons. The piano lesson pick-up was a big one. The piano teacher hit and pinched. Dad’s arrival meant no pinching or hitting with the ruler.
He crowned me ‘Mouth Almighty.” I could have been 10 when he first called me that. I had something to say when it was felt I should have been “quiet.” Dad was the one who participated in verbal jousting. He permitted me – within reason- to go an extra step with my opinion. Deep down I felt he wanted to hear what possibly outrageous thing I had to say. When I defended my point he laughed that big laugh and said, “Who do you think you are? A lawyer?
Dad loved jazz and played it all the time. He’d slip a record out of its cover and place it on the record player. He’d let the record play and act like he was directing the band or he’d make the sound of an instrument. After that, he’d ask us to guess who was playing or singing. “Sarah Vaughn! Stan Getz! Nina Simone! Dave Brubeck! George Shearing!” He had us listen to so much jazz and learn who was who we could call out answers, sometimes getting a nickel for the correct one. A favorite jazz song of Dad’s was Denzil Best’s, Nothing But D, Best.
Christmas holidays I can’t hear Nat King Cole singing ’Chestnut Roasting on an Open Fire’ without thinking of Dad singing along.

It was about 1962 when we met Dad’s brother Hobart and his family. They came from Hawaii. Hawaii to me was on the other side of the world. It had not long become part of the United States
Uncle Hobart had taken a job in Hawaii. After years in Hawaii, the family was back because one of Uncle Hobart’s two sons was accepted into West Point. Remarkable.
One day I came down the stairs and there they were, in the living room, Uncle Hobart, Aunt Mildred, Ronald, and Brian. They might have come from the airport. They had on the most brilliantly colored clothes I’d ever seen. And it was my first time seeing guys in floral shirts, real Hawaiian shirts. Dad and Uncle Hobart had the same big laugh.
Aunt Mildred had on what looked like a housedress, except it wasn’t dull and quiet.. It was, like the shirts, an explosion of color. I learned the dress was called a Muumuu.
Amazing was what they had on their feet, beach slippers. That was my first time seeing beach slippers and hearing that name. How did they keep them on their feet? Slippers for the beach, they had them on and there wasn’t a beach in sight. I wanted some. So I made some.
I traced my feet onto pieces of cardboard. I attached a ribbon where your toe went and on the sides. The cardboard was slippery and dangerous on the rug. My ‘beach slippers’ wouldn’t stay on my feet. And I went sailing down the steps in them.
I hadn’t seen any trouble in my family. Day to day, I thought everything was fine. I was caught off guard when the family suddenly, unannounced, separated, flung into a world of surprise and confusion.
Over the years I saw Dad on occasion and felt a deep fondness. At one point I thought the family was getting back together. But something didn’t work out.
Decades passed. I had a baby boy, a newborn at 48, my only child. Dad came to the house to see him and me. He laughed that big laugh and said, “Man man man.”
Overnight, it seemed, I was waiting in my car to pick up my son after a play date, or birthday party, or boy scouts. During those times my car was my office, a place to catch up with phone calls.

I called Dad during those waiting times. I told him I was like him now, the pickup person, the one who waited. I told him I was also, like him, the homework person. I told him he had shown me how to have patience in teaching and how to question in order to come to an answer.
I told him I also had a Mouth Almighty.
Dad asked about neighbors who had lived on the block years ago, Smitty, Dorothy, Paul, and Mildred, Jackie, Clara, they had all passed. Dad asked for them over and over. I didn’t mind. And politics. Dad loved to talk politics.
One day I asked Dad, “Would you like to go to a jazz concert?
“Yes,” He answered, excited
By this time I was in my 60s and Dad was just about 90. He had health concerns. He’d broken his ankle in a fall a while ago. It never healed properly. He walked with a limp. I asked his wife if she felt it was ok to take him to a concert. A concern was his needing assistance going to the bathroom. “No, problem,” I said.
I prayed he stayed in good health so we could attend the concert on Friday.
Friday evening arrived. I drove over to pick him up. He was ready and waiting. I don’t know whose joy was higher, mines or his. I took his hand and helped him down the steps and into the car.
I told him the Jazz Concert we were going to was my son’s high school Jazz Band concert. He laughed his big laugh.
I held his hand and guided him through the gym filled with high schoolers. The sound of instruments being tuned filled the air. I seated him in the center of the gym, on a floor row. I grabbed the seat behind him. Dad was in the middle of all the activities. Students were running back and forth, opening instrument cases, adjusting stands, taking pictures, and doing sound checks. Excitement was contagious.
Dad leaned forward and bobbed his head as the students played. He spoke with another senior person seated next to him who was also appreciating the music.

During intermission Dad let me know he had to go to the bathroom. I steered him through the crowd to the elevator. We got to the bathroom. He said he didn’t need help. I waited outside the door for what felt a bit too long. And then he came out.
The concert came to an amazing finish with an impressive clash of instruments. Dad turned and smiled at me. I came down and helped him into his coat. I held his hand and we inched our way out of the gym, surrounded by jubilant students, relatives, and friends.
Back in front of Dad’s house, I helped him out of the car. Walking towards his door, holding his hand, I thought about 6-year-old me waiting for him, Poseidon, to come out of the water to get me. I thought about him sitting with me and my homework. I thought about how he laughed and called me “Mouth All Mighty.”
“Did you have a good time tonight, Dad?”
“Man, man, man.”