My Inheritance

What A Good Man Leaves His Daughter

I’ve been thinking alot about my dads will—
and the impact it has on my life.

About what it does to a girl — and then a woman — to grow up with someone so pure hearted.

I never once heard my dad talk shit about another person.

Not once.

He might have said occasionally something honest about an experience, but there was never gossip. Never vitriol. He didn’t tear people down for sport. He didn’t relish someone else’s mistakes, flaws or imperfections. It simply wasn’t in him.

As a kid, I didn’t think much about it. It was simply the atmosphere around him. Only later did I realize how unusual that kind of restraint actually is.

My father was not a saint, though arguably, as near to one as I’ve been. Rarely, he could be impatient or get a little irritated. He worked long hours and carried his own stresses like anyone else. Not sure those could be categorized as shortcomings, but that’s the extent of his.

But cruelty simply wasn’t in him.

And neither was the casual objectification of women that seemed so normal among men of his generation.

My aunt used to make homemade lollipops. She had molds for all kinds of shapes, including a pair of knockers. Her husband (now her ex), used to make a spectacle of eating his. The kind of juvenile performance that expects an audience of laughter.

My dad didn’t laugh.

He didn’t make a federal case about it either.

He just simply didn’t participate or engage.

I remember him quietly setting his aside until we girls were out of sight. Maybe he ate it later? Maybe he didn’t. I honestly don’t know.

What I do know is that I never once saw him turn a woman’s body into entertainment.

There were no calendars with women hanging in the garage. No magazines lying around the house. No running commentary about women’s bodies. Not ours— not anyones—not ever.

He raised three daughters. And he managed to do it without ever making our bodies a topic of conversation. How they looked. How they should look. What we wore.

We were just people.

My dad was unequivocally pro life. I am unequivocally pro choice. He was pro Israel & I support Palestinian Sovereignty. And we never once argued about it. In fact, we never even discussed it.

I think we both understood neither of us was going to change the other’s mind. So we simply didn’t make the difference into a battleground.

That, too, was part of his character. He didn’t seem to feel the need to dominate a disagreement.

I was so upset I once told him about some unkind words my husband said to me early in our marriage, when Josh was still drinking, and my dad got choked up. Tears in his eyes. He didn’t rage. He didn’t threaten.

He just felt it.

You could see how deeply it hurt him to know someone had spoken to his daughter that way.

And, also, he didn’t hold it against or over my guy, either. He stayed connected to his love and humanity, always.

Children and animals gravitated to him. Some might say flocked. Always. Without exception. He worked long hours but he never missed an opportunity to hold a baby or pet a dog.

He was happy with simple pleasures. A strong cup of coffee, biscuits & gravy, baked beans, cutting wood, a Sunday drive, a good book, a campfire with all the kids and grands. He was never trying to get or do or be grandiose in anyway.

He rarely used my moms name— with others he called her his bride, with her it was Babe, Sweetie, Toots (my personal favorite— pronounced with a soft double o, not to be confused with the long o of flatulence!). He never missed a chance to get her a sweet & sappy card for her birthday, anniversary, Valentine’s Day & Sweetest Day, leave her a love note if he ran an errand (before he had a cell phone). He was God’s and hers before anything else, “All my love, all my life long”.

I can’t remember a single time hearing him raise his voice to my mom. And I have very few memories of him yelling at us girls. I was an curious/mischievous little girl & unruly teenager, but he and I never argued— he might ask me what I was thinking, but we only ever talked it out.

When I got pregnant at 19, my biggest fear, raised in a Christian household, was that my family would expect me to get married (they did)— and I wasn’t ready for that. He told me I didn’t have to do anything I didn’t want to— so I didn’t.

He was always working on something, inside or outside, and plenty of it alone. He didn’t ask for help much. Though he and my mom worked hard together, in tandem, with a beautiful homestead to prove it, he did alot himself.

He’d come into the house and find us girls clucking like hens around the kitchen island, talking endlessly. He’d walk up behind one of us and rub our shoulder or make his little mouth noise, a sound I still don’t know how to describe but would recognize anywhere. He’d give our mom a smooch, grab a snack, listen for a minute. And then back outside he’d go.

He never seemed bothered that we could go on and on like that or that we never stopped asking him if he needed anything. Drink some water. Take a break. We were always trying to mother the man who spent his whole life quietly taking care of everyone else.

When my son was little, my dad always called him “sweet boy.” Or sometimes “my sweet boy.” He’d hold his hand when they walked. Let him work slowly beside him with his own little tool apron. Even when he had shit to do.

When I was little he used to let me punch him in his eight pack abs. He was the strongest man I knew. And that strength never really went away. No one outworked Mike Ryan. He would never say something like that about himself. But it was true.

He was built for endurance.

Hot or cold. Tired or in pain. Young or aging. He worked. And he hummed while he did it. Just humming along. Content. Resolute. At ease in his own effort.

If he needed to talk to you about something he’d ask first.

“Hey kiddo, you got a minute?”

And then he’d be intentional about whatever it was.

I stopped going to church in 2008 when it became clear there was no separation of church and state there anymore. I could not let my son grow up hearing the kind of rhetoric that was being preached. I decided in during a sermon one day that when it was over I would never go back. Except for funerals and weddings.

My dad never questioned my decision. Never made me feel bad about it.

But a few years ago he left me a voicemail.

“Hey kiddo. Tomorrow’s friends day at church and you’re my friend, so I thought I’d invite you.”

You bet your ass I went to church that Sunday.

I went with him to his Veterans Day luncheons there too.

I loved spending time with him when it was just the two of us. Because he always talked more than I did. Whether we were cutting wood, watching birds, working in the yard, driving to get lumber, fixing something at my house, or just tossing stones into a river.

He could talk your ear off if you let him! And you could hear the giddiness in his voice when he shared stories and memories. Hopes. Aspirations. Sometimes he was a man of few words. But when he spoke, those words were carefully chosen.

He prayed before we ate. Always. And he talked to God like a friend he respected a lot. You could feel that relationship in him. It was solid & familiar.

I never once saw him take advantage of a person or a situation. Not once. I never heard him lie. He didn’t make excuses. If you asked for help, he helped. Unless he was already helping someone else. And then he’d help as soon as he could.

There are so many more things I could say.

The imprint this left on us girls, on me, is almost impossible to describe.

Maybe ineffable is the word.

Because what do you call it when someone gives you a moral compass so steady you you know the moment you— or the world— is off the map? What do you call the inheritance of growing up inside the orbit of a man who simply lived with integrity.

Not loudly.

Not self righteously.

Just quietly.

Every. Single. Day.

My daddy didn’t leave me money or land he collected over his lifetime.

What he left me was something harder to measure and far more enduring—

He left me a way of orienting inside this ol’ world, with love and kindness and devotion and humility and grace.

And I’ll carry his legacy with me everywhere I go.