Imperfections

My father, it angered me to learn,
was an ordinary mortal.

All the disappointment
I’d felt ashamed for causing him
seemed to be a ruse.

Imperfect little man,
with his chest puffed out
and his tongue tsk, tsk, tsking,
he made me feel so small.

But I began to see the cracks.
I don’t remember when.

It might have been on a car ride
to a ball game, or maybe
it was in between the kisses
and the hugs and the pats on the back.

Or it could have been the time he stood
at the end of the drive
crying
as I headed off to college.

And it must have been clear
how foolish and frail he was
each time he bailed me out of bad decisions.

Anyone could spot his blemishes
as he wept by my sister’s coffin.

Turns out he wasn’t ten feet tall.
He was only five-foot eight.

He wasn’t a saint
or a super hero
or even that unique.
He was just an old mail man
and a part-time cattle farmer.

Sometimes, you could see the dirt
beneath his fingernails
as he held his grandchildren.

If you stopped by on Sunday
and allowed him to cook you a breakfast
of biscuits and eggs and sausages,
you’d see the kind of mess he made.

You could even see the fear in his eyes
when they told him he had Leukemia.

He looked so pale the day he last held my hand.
He looked so much smaller than I’d remembered
when he mouthed the words, “I love you.”
before he closed his eyes.

By the time they slipped his casket
beneath the grass and stone,
I knew all his flaws
and loved each and every one of them.