I’ve been dreaming about my father a lot these days. He died 23 years ago. In the dream, he was quiet and so was I, much as we both were in real life. In the dream, we sang a couple of songs he used to sing when I was a child and adolescent—Irish Limericks sung instead of recited.

There he was, in my dream, driving a station wagon, which in reality he never owned for himself. He did, however, buy us kids the old “tank” to drive when we got our licenses. He always bought luxury cars for himself, and I don’t remember him ever driving that station wagon that was made of steel.

We knew that beige station wagon was made of steel because we could not put a dent in the thing no matter how many trees, curbs, or street lamps we ran her into. We named her Bertha, which sounded as sturdy as she was.

My father would proclaim about his own car such things as “lots of room, cushy seats, feels like we’re floating on air”, when he packed us all into his newest car-extravaganza, a 1972 Lincoln Continental Town Car. He bought these cars with a combination of his rolled up sleeves at the office, and his good horse sense at the racetrack.

His glistening blue eyes would look in the rear-view mirror at our brooding, adolescent faces in the backseat. Smiling and rolling a Garcia Y Vega back and forth between his teeth, he would chuckle at our sullenness in a way that made his body pounce beneath whichever hat he chose to wear that day, usually a Panoma hat in various sizes. I remember one that was blue with a plaid band wrapped around it. It seemed to be his everyman hat.

I do remember him in the passenger side of the thank-god-we-don’t-have-to -cart-them-around-anymore station wagon once, though, when I was driving with a permit. We went over a small bridge and after awhile my dad said to me, “are you going to pull over?”

His elbow was propped against the door near the closed window, and he placed two fingers to his temple, plucking his thumbnail with his teeth, once, twice, three times. His gaze was non-chalant and straight-ahead. I glanced at him, puzzled, and said, “no, why?”

As I looked back at the road ahead, my hands at 10 and 2, I got a little ticked off as I reflected on how the corner of his lip creased and that one eyebrow of his went up—the one eyebrow that went up when he thought someone was being amazingly stupid in the moment.

“You have a flat tire”, he said, matter of fact. Then he turned and looked at me square, amusement gleamed in his eyes. I may have felt stupid, but, I did learn how to change a flat that day.

He bought that station wagon, he told us, so we could haul ourselves to all our softball, baseball, basketball, football, track and field, and cheerleading practices. We had a great time in that car and so did all our high school friends.

If we wanted the windshield wipers to come on, we had to turn on the radio. If we wanted the heat to come on, we had to blast the horn once, or something to that effect. For all we knew, we were driving a human death trap, but we didn’t care. It was the time of no seat belts, and we had fun doing it. Besides, Bertha was a talking piece. A lot of stuff—things our parents would never want to know about—went down in that car.

My father and his wife, my “stepmother” attended all our games, via his car—every game. Their record could beat any postal carrier’s record for delivering mail in all kinds of weather—any day. We angst-ridden, ingrates didn’t appreciate their effort enough, but our friends thought they were cool as hell. They had great game faces.

My father didn’t praise me much in real life other than to imply I was strong. This was in response to one of my brother’s epileptic seizures. He and I had been there when my brother fell and violently seized most all of the times my brother had a gran mall seizure.

My brother was an All-Star athlete, a natural, in spite of it. He and my step-brother were pure entertainment to watch. My step-brother would rip the basketball down from the board after an opponent’s attempt at a basket. His demeanor signaled to the other team they would not be getting the ball back any time soon.

Come Autumn, it was a male bonding ritual for my father, brother, and step-brother to boil mouth guards, or whatever they’re called, while huddled around the dining room table. I don’t recall all the steps, but I remember steam rising into the amber light over the stove from a boiling pot and, at some interval, these plactic, waxy units were fitted into those two bozos’ mouths. I remember thinking the whole thing was a male conspiracy to withdraw and buttress themselves from female household members.

My brother was the first-string quarterback, and my step-brother was some kind of “end”. Dead end would have been my phrase for it back then. While being proud of them, I also thought they acted “queer”. Back then “queer” was the word for anything that made one’s eyes roll and want to hurl.

In the spring they took up an even more disgusting ritual. They’d oil baseball gloves with some male, mystical, mystery oil and spit, over and over, into the palm of their gloves. Then they would plunge their fists in after it and grind away like their arms and fists were a mortar and pestal.

“Really work it in there guys,” my father would say. Then they’d finish by nestling a ball into their gloves and wrapping their gloves tight with string or rubberbands overnight. This ritual appeared along with their increasing ability to annoy me.

I learned how to throw, catch and drop-kick a football, took a baseball in the eye once as pitcher—line drive, right eye. I even cracked two of my front teeth because of one of their pranks, which involved a pile of snow, a garage roof top, and me jumping at their command.

We had large front lawns, and my brothers would invite their friends to play football, basketball, or baseball. If they were short a man, I was dragged into it.

“Look what my sister can do,” my brother would say, as he told me to show them all the ball tricks he told me I should learn if I knew what was good for me. There were reasons why I let him torment me, though. While thinking he was a world-class smart ass, which he was, I also looked up to him. I also worried about him every day.

It was difficult for my father to watch his beautiful son suffer from epilepsy. I have always had difficulty reconciling seeing him make amazing plays, be handsome, funny, intelligent, with having a syndrome that tortured him, out of his control.

After one particular episode, and after we had put my brother to bed, my father and I both said how we wished we had epilepsy instead of my brother, both sad and worn by the incident. I’m not sure who said it first, but I think it was me. Then my father said, “I don’t worry about you, though. I know you can take care of yourself”.

I remember an initial, superficial feeling of being praised by my father but was saddened by his statement, too. It was a way of telling me, consciously or subconsciously, to continue taking care of myself, I perceived, because he couldn’t and wouldn’t be able to do it. He had his hands full enough already.

Distance grew between us as I faded from his view and into the land of males other than my father and brothers. The distance between us would later be, not just emotional, but geographical and filled with long gaps of time, no contact with one another at all. Distance became our relationship until he died an early death at the age of 58.

I don’t know if he was aware, but I was his shadow as a girl. I used to run to the door to greet him when he returned home from work, never with hugs and kisses, because I knew that was not his way, but just to a kitchen stool at the L-shaped wooden bar.

Legs askew, elbows on the tiled counter and jaw leaning against my semi-curled hands, I would give him a “hi, dad”, when he walked through the door. I don’t imagine he ever knew how much I was beaming inside to see him, but maybe he did. We didn’t tell each other things like that in my family. My dad proclaimed that we were a family that “does not wear our hearts on our sleeves”.

My father was a sturdy man, in my eyes, as well as in the eyes of others. Handsome, athletic, hard-working, and hard-playing are just some of the ways he could be described. Other words like stubborn and quiet come to mind. He possessed a certain deftness, mental accuity, that I have not seen in many people I’ve met. I say that because it is true, not just because he was my father—at least that’s how I have chosen to remember him.

He was a Naval Korean War Veteran. The tops of his feet were badly burned in the war, and he always called on me to bring him his warm, porcelin foot bath with epsom salts, towels, and Gold Bond foot powder, on days his feet bothered him most. We never knew how much pain he was in other than when he would say, “Laney, would you bring me my foot bath”.

I always jumped at the chance. It was my privilege to lay a mat down, place a warm basin of water and salts on the mat, and then guide his feet into the water. He would always make an “ahhhh” sound when his red and scarred feet felt the water. He did not bestow this task upon any other member of the family.

As he grew older something happened to my father that was beyond his control, however. I remember one of the last times I saw him, besides the last time when he was in the hospital. We took a walk down to the ocean. By then the farm was sold, and he was now retired and living on the rugged Maine Coast.

Andre the Seal was due in, and all the towns people went once a day to see if he had arrived. It was an annual event. My father wanted to take me there to see if Andre would show up because there had been much speculation that he would not make his annual trip this year, due to his age.

We stood in relative silence looking out at the ocean, waiting by a white, wooden fence, rocks and green sea glass beneath our feet. My father would tell a quick story about this or that usual, daily event. He cleared his throat and made a motor-boat sound with his lips here and there.

Then, we could hear someone shout, “there he is”. Sure enough, there was Andre’s whiskered face popping up from the water. I felt happy to see him, happy my father could see his old friend.

I could feel a tightness in my throat and thought, fight the feeling. Just as I thought that, I saw something I had never seen on my father’s face. He wiped his sleeve across his cheek in a quick swoop.

I did the same.