My father was a beautiful, curious contradiction—a man built out of opposing forces. He was drawn to the silhouette of skinny women, a sharp contrast to the ritual he performed with us girls at the supper table. There, he would reward whoever ate the most with ten bright dimes, silver passport tokens meant for the slot machine waiting in the basement.
I see now that this preoccupation with a full belly was the language of an old wound. As a boy, he had been given away by his own parents, left to be raised by her uncle and aunt on a small island clipped by the currents of the Mississippi River. Their reality was sparse. It was a life made of doing without. Yet, in that poverty, he was fiercely loved by an aunt he called "Mama".
"Mama" was the great-aunt who raised him, the woman I called Grandma Edna. She left us when I was just under 5 years old, but her ghost remains entirely unblemished in my mind; to my childhood eyes, she walked on water. I can still close my eyes and feel the physical gravity of her love—a heavy, warm tenderness whenever she held me or spoke my name. Today, her wedding ring lives on my finger. She has been gone since 1967, but the gold still remembers.
Because my father often went to bed with a half-empty stomach, he spent our childhoods ensuring his daughters never would.
We had a slot machine in our basement. It seems an absurd artifact now, but in the 1960s and '70s, didn't every subterranean concrete room hold a pool table, a bar, and the flashing promise of a jackpot? Ours did.
Down in that dim light, we learned the early language of currency and competition. He would reward us with bright dimes for that slot machine whenever we out-ate our sisters, or when we finished a chore before the others. To be the fastest to cross the line first was a currency he respected. He was quietly teaching us how to survive the race.
He was a man who lived in those overlapping shadows—drawn to the thin silhouettes of other women yet placing silver into our small palms to ensure his own daughters grew sturdy and armored against a harsh world.
I still remember the tactile weight of him in the aisles of Kmart. It was a different era, back when the air in public spaces was heavy with the haze of cigarette smoke. He would walk with a lit cigarette balanced in his right hand, while my seven-year-old fingers clung tightly to the first two fingers of his left. He possessed a peculiar, rebellious streak; he thought it a clever victory whenever he "accidentally" left an item tucked away in the bottom of the shopping buggy, escaping the cashier's notice.
Yet, the paradox deepens there. While he took those small shortcuts, he held his daughters to a fierce, uncompromising standard of honesty. He simply knew how to locate the shortest distance between himself and his desires—whether that path led to women, motorcycles, uncounted store items, or a gambling table.
But beneath the lawless charm was a bone-deep devotion to labor and duty. He was one of the hardest-working men to ever cross my path—unfailing, reliable, and solid as iron. Every single day, without fail, he showed up to work at the Rock Island Arsenal, that heavy military base where weapons are forged. I don't think he ever called in sick. If anything, he arrived early, stepping into the day with a predictable clockwork momentum. I can still hear him say it: "Eight hours work for eight hours pay, that’s the way to do it, boy."
Yes, he called me "boy." He called my sisters "boy," too. He wasn't a man who knew how to wear softness on his sleeve, nor was he versed in the tender vocabulary of endearment. But he took care of us in the ways he understood. He believed in meeting his obligations to the penny and the clock; he was immaculately prompt in paying his bills, anchoring himself to a quiet financial discipline that he fiercely taught me to mirror.
Even when the air shifted and he left us, his sense of duty never truly vanished. The child support was always paid, and every single Sunday, he sat down to type us a letter on his manual typewriter. Without fail, the postman delivered it into our hands by Thursday of each week.
My husband calls me a scrapper now, a title given in jest but rooted in absolute truth. I look in the mirror and recognize the architecture. I am my father’s daughter.
There is a quiet, feral instinct in how I move through this world. You can see it in the sharp calculation of my eyes at the auction block, waiting for the exact moment to strike, or in the restless rhythm of a flip, turning dust into profit. Like him, I am bound by a strange duality—a romance with the clever bargain, shadowed by the rigid obligation to clear my debts before the sun sets. When the hunger takes over, it isn’t about greed; it is about survival. I am a scrapper at my core, possessing an internal compass that cuts through the noise to chart the absolute shortest path to my goals, fiercely clawing my way toward the life I am determined to claim.
But also like him, I am anchored by hard work, and I will fight like a Marine for the people I love.
He was such a curious contradiction in so many ways. And in so many ways, I am the continuation of his stride.
It is a heavy thing, carrying the blueprint of the people who made us. Sometimes, art catches up to our own ghosts and echoes them right back to us. I am attaching a music video below—a song that unspools these very threads of bloodline, struggle, and survival.
As you watch it, you might hear the rhythm of your own history. For me, it is a mirror. It reminds me that we do not arrive in this world entirely blank; we are chiseled by the hands that held us, the basements we grew up in, and the silent sacrifices of those who came before. Take a moment, press play, and look into the shadows with me. Just click the hyperlink above the pictures:
.jpg)
.jpg)
