My Dad, the gentleman.

I started college early.  I was a sixteen year old senior in high school when a local community college began offering to let seniors take college courses at night for a ridiculously reduced rate.  I'd recieve full credit.  My parents asked me if I'd like to try it out and eager for more reasons to overachieve, I said yes.  I couldn't drive yet, too young, so twice a week my father and I would stroll out to his little car and drive thirty minutes to campus.  It was autumn and dark and my father was not willing to risk his teenaged daughter's safety on a strange new campus, community college though it was.  So he walked me to my class each night, my arm tucked safely in the crook of his elbow.  He carried my books for me too.  Some day it made me roll my eyes.  I was SIXTEEN.  Practically GROWN UP.  I would be fine.  Truthfully, it was dark and cold on that campus and I was really glad to have my dad backing me up.  He walked me right to the door of my classroom.

During class Dad hung out in the library, a few buildings away.  There were mostly older women in my night class and they thought it was spectacular that Dad took such good care of me.  I became their pet.  The professor liked me too.  He was a tiny man; I remember specualting that he must be part dwarf; not the achondraplasia kind, the mythical kind.  He looked exactly like I imagined Prince Caspian's tutor to have looked, right down to the goatee and the sparkling blue eyes. 

At the end of class my father would be waiting outside the door, smiling gently.  He'd carry my books and we'd laugh about the mysterious way the lights along the sidewalk always flickered when he walked by.  I hung back once to see if it was just him and it was.  (Maybe my dad is Dumbledore with his putter-outer?)  The head start in college was nice but thing that stands out the most to me is those walks and drives back and forth with my father.  It was time when I had him just to myself, time when I was at a vulnerable age and I knew I could tell him anything.  And I did.  Those rides were always over too soon and I was always looking forward to the next one. 

I've always known I have an extraordinary father but it's taken me years to realize how rare he really is.  Tonight I hope very much that I am even half the parent he was.