A NOTE TO MY READERS: This post is longer than the average post. I’d ask your forgiveness and patience, however, today is the first time I wrote with an audience other than you in mind. Dad, Happy Father’s Day. xoxo

Lisa

The Piorczynski family home, Oakville, Ontario to The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Ontario
Average commuting time: 29 minutes

He let me choose where to stop for dinner. Since I was 5 years old, I always chose McDonald’s. Since he was worried that soon I’d be his only child, he always obliged. The third time we pulled up to the drive-thru speaker, he had my routine all figured out. Dad sat a little taller when he placed my order—his voice robust and proud, as if he was bragging about my report card to our neighbors:

My daughter would like a Happy Meal with a Coke. But she wants just ketchup on the hamburger. That’s right. Only ketchup. And she’ll have a chocolate sundae for dessert without peanuts. She doesn’t like peanuts.

The other half of our lives was waiting for us on the third floor of the hospital. We knew we were there when we heard the chorus of coughing. Hacks and wheezes usually reserved for the lungs of chain smokers had made homes in bodies that were much too small for them. Cheryl didn’t have cystic fibrosis like the rest of her floormates, but she had a CF cough. I’d bury my face into my father when a fit would overtake her. Through closed eyes, I could still see Cheryl’s frame shaking—pauper’s house in a California quake—and my mother standing resolutely at her side, hearing each petition Cheryl’s failing lungs made.

It was family tradition, upon our 7:00 p.m. arrival, to take a walk down the hospital corridors. Dad was the only one whom Cheryl allowed to move her from bed to wheelchair. He did it seamlessly, without disturbing the infection-draining tubes that jutted out from her sides.

Okay, Shnook. I’ve got you. I won’t let it hurt, he assured her, grateful to have a specialty none of the surrounding MDs did.

After the walk, after thanking the nurses for giving me stickers, after kissing Mom and Cheryl goodbye, Dad and I reluctantly retreated to the parking garage. By the way he squeezed my hand and wouldn’t answer when I asked if Cheryl was going to die, I knew he didn’t expect our family’s future to play out as it did. He didn’t expect Cheryl to recover and come home again a month later. He didn’t expect the doctors to say that it was a miracle; that it happened against all probabilities. And he didn’t expect Mom to find two bald spots on my head when she did return, or to learn that our frequent trips to doctors’ offices hadn’t ended yet.


The Piorczynski family home, Oakville, Ontario to Wigs International Salon, Henrietta, New York
Average commuting time: 2 hours, 43 minutes

They were always suspicious of us at the border. But Dad was determined to keep my suffering a private matter, even if it meant adding an extra hour to our trip. He confidently gave his straight-in-the-eye answers to the customs officer’s questions.

Citizenship?
Canadian.
Where’r’ya going sir?
To Rochester.
What’s the purpose of your trip?
To go to Rochester.

The customs man nodded, filled out the yellow form and pointed to the parking spot we were to pull our station wagon into.

See honey, Dad said leaning over to me, I didn’t directly answer his question. That’s why we’re getting pulled over.

I’m not sure whether I loved him more or less for keeping my secret. I think it must have been more because I remember blushing violently the only time he did tell the truth: My daughter has alopecia. It’s a hair loss disease. The wig she’s wearing needs to be replaced. We’re going to Rochester to get her a new one.

On that trip, they waved us through without another word.

Every 20 minutes or so, Dad did his best to start a conversation. He turned down the volume on the radio and asked me questions about the hair I was going to get.

How long is it going to be, honey?
I shrugged, said I didn’t know and stared out the window.
Ummmm, he cooed, It’s gonna be beautiful.

I knew he was waiting for me to say something else—to say how happy I was to be getting a new wig. But my pre-teen embarrassment kept me mute.

The girls at the salon were always thrilled to see us—especially him. Dad strode in and boomed greetings to my stylist, Michelle, and the other employees. He had a gift for remembering the lives of people he saw twice a year.

Michelle, he gushed, How is your David doing? He was acing his math tests the last time we were here. Still at the top of his class, I imagine?

Michelle beamed and rattled off her latest while Dad encouraged her, nodding at every turn. He made small talk big in the same way that I made his attempts at big talk small.

Leaving me in their ready hands for the 3-hour thinning and cutting process, Dad toured Henrietta’s big box stores, inevitably buying 15 of something he didn’t need because they were—could you believe it—$2.54 each. He came back with coffee and sweets for everyone and smiled at me in my new hair. His affirmations of my beauty became the hit single we listened to over and over again until we arrived back home. The more he declared his belief—that I was the most beautiful girl to ever live—the more I longed for something of my own to believe in.

The Piorczynski family home, Oakville, Ontario to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Oakville, Ontario
Average commuting time: 19 minutes

Even though Dad was never one to sleep in past 5:00 a.m., he hated seeing me up that early. He always came to my bedroom door 10 minutes later than I had asked him to wake me, proud play the role of snooze button.

It’s about that time, honey, he said, careful not to cross the seam in the carpet that separated my room from the hallway.

While I dragged myself from bed to bathroom to kitchen to front door, Dad started the truck, frostbitten in our driveway, and warmed it to a thaw while the talk radio station barked its morning editorials.

There were things I wanted to ask him as we drove to the church. I wanted to know if he thought I was crazy; if he thought all the women in his life were crazy for dressing in white clothing the previous summer and burying their pasts in a pool of water. I wanted to know what he thought I was learning at these early morning scripture classes. Did he think I was brainwashed? Did he respect me more or less for believing? Did he think it was just a phase? And, although I knew the answer, I wanted to know why he woke up 2 hours early every weekday to drive me to a church he suspected might be a hoax.

But instead of asking, I put my hand out, open-palmed, and waited for him to take it in his own. Which he quickly did.

Toronto Pearson International Airport to the Piorczynski family home, Oakville, Ontario
Average commuting time: 39 minutes

Dad never tired of teasing Mom when he came to get me from the airport. Once I was settled in the car and my suitcase neatly tucked in the trunk, he dialed our home number.

Watch this, he said, grinning. I can’t find her, honey! I’ve been sitting at the Delta terminal waiting and waiting but there’s no sign of her. What? She’s flying Air Canada? Why didn’t you say so? You told me Delta.

Mom got so worked up that I could hear her yelling into the phone from the passenger’s seat. Then Dad, unable to sustain the prank any longer, burst into his back-of-the-classroom laughter, assured her that he had easily found me, and placed the phone in my hand to talk about the flight.

He took the long route home—even though Mom had told him to hurry—as I described my life’s montage: my classes, my roommates, my co-workers, my professors. Dad lapped up every detail I had to offer. In spite of personal and professional success, he didn’t consider himself to be smart because he never went to college. That piece of paper was the litmus test to his definition of intelligence.

No one can ever take that away from you, he said when he praised recent graduates. You’ve got something to show for yourself.

Although the conversation never turned from academics to boyfriends, I could tell he hoped I had one; one who’d have the good sense to propose to me and get me to settle down just like Cheryl had done 5 years earlier, and add more grandchildren to the family photo. Children softened him, and it was clear that he enjoyed the process. Mom always told us that she had worried about the kind of father he’d be before they’d had us. He talked so tough, she said.

But with each baby she put in his arms, his threats of eye-for-an-eye discipline quickly melted. It was like pouring white paint into a can of red. He went from the color of revolution to the color of cotton candy. And there he was sitting next to me in the car, hoping to become softer still.

As we pulled into the driveway, he reached for my hand and asked if I was eating properly, if I needed more money.

You know you can come home whenever you want. I’ve got thousands of air miles I never use. Besides, I prefer to drive. You know that.

I did.