My Father Was My Hero

He was scoring points like Michael Jordan and Wilt Chamberlin combined. I remember that day in the park when I was about five years old. My father played basketball with his buddies and I played in the childrens area on the

swings - then I moved to the big slide.

It was a really B-I-G slide and I was a little scared to climb all the way up that giant ladder. But, I took the challenge anyway and slowly climbed up - step-by-step - maintaining a tight grip on the guardrail and keeping my eye on

my father.

When I reached the apex of the slide I carefully began to move from the ladder side to the slide side. But, thats all I remember of that scene because when I woke up I was in my fathers arms. He was running down the street to

get me home.

It was the late-1950s. My father was a big man, one of the best athletes around. He was a cop, a policeman. Everybody respected him. The whole neighbor looked up to him. He was a handsome, intelligent, and personable

man, good at everything he did and he had an intelligent and pretty wife.

I imagine that after I fell from the top of the slide, my father checked me. He found that I was unconscious. He scooped me up and started taking me home to my mother who was a nurse. He was frightened. I had fallen about

10 to 15 feet from the top of the slide. When I woke up about half the way home, I was not surprised to be in my fathers arms as he completed the five blocks back to our house.
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I will always cherish that memory. Because of that day and the trips to the barbershop where all the men seemed to straighten up when my father walked in, Ill always remember that in childhood, my father was my hero. He

was there for me.

A Date With Divorce

That was a crushing day. It was one that I will never forget and one that I would eventually repeat myself. The pain, anger and helplessness of that moment are etched in my memory to stay. I was eight and my sister was nine.

My mother called us into the living room. She and my father sat far apart. She told us that we were going to move and that my father would not be moving with us.

My father said nothing. My hero was silent. He was there, but not there. I assumed that his inability to move with us had something to do with the fact that he was a police officer and he had important work to do.

We all cried, just as my sons, their mother and I did on that fateful day 33 years later when I had to break the same kind of news to my own two sons.

But on that day, the earth seemed to stand still as the scene was frozen in the minds of those it hurt.

Beforehand, my mother must have anguished over how she would tell us and how we would react. As the ominous day approached she probably reasoned in her own mind - searching for a way to avoid the evitable.

My father might have wondered how he would look to us, if he would lose our love and what it would be like to be single again.