My last post celebrated what would have been my mother’s 101st birthday. Today would have been my father’s birthday, also his 101st. My father was 11 days younger than my mother and it seems only right that I write about him, too – he was very different from my mother, but equally remarkable. Meet Arden…

My parents were born only days apart, in the same rural town. Both lost their fathers too early. Like my mother, Arden, too was one of three children. He and my mother attended the same school and married after he returned from military service as a Marine Corps pilot. Both wanted a family, but my mother’s heart condition made pregnancy impossible, and because my mother wasn’t expected to live a long life, no adoption agency would consider them.

But miracles do happen. The night that my birth mother went into labour, she arrived at the hospital with a clear decision already made. She wanted to have me adopted but didn’t want to work with an agency -and her attending doctor knew that Rowena and Arden wanted a baby. Invisible forces were at play that day – in a way that no mortal could have scripted, the separate stories of a courageous unwed mother, her newborn child, and a wise but childless couple wove together. I was adopted in a private adoption – I was only 5 days old when I was discharged from the hospital and went home to my new life. My new parents were progressive in their thinking and always completely open about my adoption – nothing about it was ever kept secret from me, and that in itself was highly unusual in the mid 1950’s.

My parents adopted me with full awareness that my mother might not live to see me into adulthood. That means that my father knew that he might well end up raising me as a single parent, a single father. Of course they would have hoped that my mother would defy the odds, but the fact remained that he wanted me so much that he was willing to do whatever it took. And that is how I think of him now: hands on. This was a remarkable man.

I loved my dad, completely and totally. But in an ugly teenager way, I made him a bad guy in my made-up story about myself and what a difficult life I had. I thought of myself as a give-away child. I think it is a story that many adopted children tell themselves, and mine seemed all the more believable because my (adoptive) mother and father divorced when I was only three. But it was not a true story. Far from being a giveaway, I was the child of extraordinary collaborative parenting.

We don’t have the abundance of photos that build up around 21st century babies, but I have a myriad of memories and mental images, snapshots in time that only I can access. I remember my dad rubbing my aching legs as a young girl – I had been born with hip problems and was in a cast from the waist down for many months and I still remember the achiness I lived with as a child. My dad would rub my legs to ease the pain at bedtime. Sometimes he would sing to me, too – I especially remember him singing his beloved Marine Corps Hymn. As a pilot, his love of flying ran deep. He would take me to watch the airplanes taking off and landing at the little Napa airport, sharing his passion for aviation and all things travel – he loved cars, trains, planes and shared his fascination with me. I remember the thrill of spotting “going trains” with him whenever we went anywhere.

I was only three when my parents separated, and I remember the shock and sadness of him telling me that he wasn’t going to live with us anymore – it must have broken his heart to tell me that. But I also remember his tiny apartment and my visits there. In fact, I remember being there when he told me he was going to marry my stepmother. I don’t think either of them ever understood how happy that made me, from the get-go. I knew they belonged together. I remember him cooking breakfasts – eggs, bacon, pancakes. I remember his joy when they told me I was going to be a big sister.

Looking back as an adult, what touches me most deeply was his continued commitment to me. And this part of the story didn’t happen in a vacuum – it is a tribute to both my parents and to the people they later married. My father came to visit me every day while I was growing up. Every single day. As time moved on and the families changed and grew, he never once let up on his commitment or involvement. And it was done with the full support of our extended family. This is the man I want you to know.

My most often repeated parenting quote comes from my Dad… you never stop worrying about your kids…

Dad died in 1997. He knew my children but not my sister’s daughter. He never met my husband, Jeff. And yet… the night I was flying to England to ultimately marry Jeff, I felt my dad with me, as real as if he was sitting in the next seat. He was flying me into my new life and I sensed that I had his blessing..

Arden was a trusted and beloved dentist and an active member of our community, but he suffered with ill health in the last years of his life. He was a skilled professional and his work was important to him, but I think he would have wanted to be remembered as a parent first and foremost. He never quit worrying about my sister and me, never quit caring, never stopped loving.

Happy 101st birthday, Dad!