23 & Me & My Dad

I can’t believe there was a time, however short, when I didn’t know if you were my dad. You lived a whole life not quite sure I was your daughter.

(I am, by the way. 23 and Me is better than the paternity test we never needed to take).

We have the same mouth, the same forehead wrinkles, the same crinkle in our eyes when we smile. You blamed my temper on the hot-headed Fins, but you’re the man who took a chainsaw to a perfectly good lilac bush because it knocked off your hat. I feel both fondness and fear when I see piles of wood, remembering long, hot summers tossing split logs on a trailer and stacking them outside the basement window, and frigid winter days tossing frozen logs into the basement, then braving the spiders and centipedes in the cellar to stack it all up again. You taught me to face the scary things in life, like the summer storms that used to double my young guts over in terror. We sat, exposed, on the back steps in the dark while black clouds and bright flashes of lightning bowled over us, the thunder rattling my ribcage, and you—steadfast and firm—kept me rooted and told me things I don’t remember but that helped me move through the crippling fear.

You told me it was OK to get in trouble, but you didn’t like my brand of breaking the rules. I was always grounded. I understand now that you wanted to make sure I didn’t become the kind of woman I could’ve been if you hadn’t stepped in, and I’m grateful for it. But if you didn’t have to use a tractor to pull a boy’s car out of our field, would I really be your daughter? If I didn’t try to bend those rules and exploit your loopholes (I couldn’t leave the house, but there was no limit to how many people could come over!) if I wasn’t a Rowe? I mean, are you even a parent if you aren’t scared all the time of your kid’s choices, and if you’re raising them right, and if—god forbid—they’re going to grow up JUST LIKE YOU?

I get my work ethic from you. The bad jokes, the big mouth, the brains. There might’ve been a bar of soap on top of the TV with “Julia’s sass” on it, but where do you think I got that SASS from? And my son, like his Grandpa Troy, is mouthy and funny and fearless and drives me absolutely bat-shit crazy. I tell him about you. We say “Hi Grandpa Troy” when we find feathers in the yard. The kid loves birds. The other day, on the drive to school, I told him how we lost you. It’s been so many years that I can finally talk about it without crying…most of the time. I know how you hate those “crying jags” but this one is totally on you.

I wish we could clink the necks of a few Bud Lights over the 23 and Me report that confirms Renee is my half-sister, so you are my dad, while your grandsons push trucks around the pergola, eating your grapes off the vine and getting into all your shit. If I could do anything on March 27th this year, that would be it. Happy Birthday Dad.  You’re missed now as much as ever. With little boys in the family who will never know you the way we did, we might even miss you more.