Reflections of a daughter's love by Kelley Rouse
The family story of my first "real" meeting with my
dad is not a memory, for I was too young. But it has
almost become a memory from the telling. It took
place upon my dad's return from Korea
after a 13 month tour of duty with the Marines.
I was around 2 years old and must have wondered
who this man was who now thought he was in charge
of me. I'm sure he was not prepared for how to deal
with a daughter after just returning from war, especially
a curly-haired one who had inherited his strong will.
As the story goes, a showdown of will took place early on when he gave me a swat on the backside for some act of defiance. As he turned to go, I am told I ran after him, and bit HIM on the backside.
My mother says he was so surprised all he could do was laugh, and then look at me with a new respect. I was a force to be dealt with, and I have always known he loved my spirit, even in later years, when my problem with authority has caused me grief.
There are other things I remember. Watching the Gilette fights on Friday nights and sharing the treat of the evening, "pickled pigs feet!" The very thought that I use to love those pigs feet makes me shudder now. But it was a magical food then, shared with my dad.
"Shave and a hair cut...six bits," he used to sing to me.
I can still feel the wind blowing in my face
that year in Pacific Grove when we would go on
motorscooter rides along 17 Mile Drive. There was
grunion hunting on the beach during a full moon and
a spring tide and the sweet tenor of Nat King Cole to stir
the romantic longings of a young girl and introduce her
to the power of a love song.
"Marines don't care," he would say when I would worry about his feelings being hurt.
I have always known I was the apple of his eye.
He made sure I knew how to say Worcestershire and always made me slow down and speak clearly and use correct grammar even when it would frustrate me completely sometimes to have to do it.
"Lt. Col. Skeath's residence, Kelley speaking" he taught me to say, showing we all have parts to play in the game of life.
My father is a soldier with the heart of a poet, carefully protected inside a tough shell. I learned from him how still waters run deep, and because of him, I understood my own need for a private self.
He showed me how to enjoy life, with his feet firmly planted behind the wheel of his boat, and his desire to give his family the finer things that as a boy he never had. He gave me days on the water, a taste for raw oysters and artichokes, and how to savor good scotch. There were the mangos and pineapple he would bring back from trips to Hawaii and decadently delicious chocolates from Brussels.
One of our finest times was when we met in England. I was broke, at the end of a month-long Shakespeare course, and he rescued me from a boarding house where I was eating baked beans for breakfast and took me to his plush hotel where we "did" London first class. We laughed about the looks we received that suggested it was a scandal, "such a young woman with that older man."
And always, always, my father has loved my accomplishments. My constant and most devoted fan through countless plays, who stood by me when I spent a summer doing theater in New York over the disapproval and concerns of other family members. It was that summer that I truly realized what an ally I had.
Even these words I write here today, I can write
because of my father. He fostered my efforts with
writing and computers, and since I could not spend
this Father's day with him in person, I thought maybe
this would be the place to let him know, what he knows
already in his heart: how much I love him for all the
countless ways throughout my life he has nurtured and
encouraged my growth.
Thank you, Dad.
Kelley
June 16, 1996 Kelley Rouse All Rights Reserved