Welcome Home, Daddy

That’s what love is like…

it’s like coming home.

It is 12:01 in the early morning as I write this.  I’m wide awake thinking. I am thinking about many things, and you can imagine what I mean if you’ve ever sat awake at night with your mind racing, barely letting you process what it throws at you before a new thought arises. But tonight I have gotten out the computer to write my thoughts and perhaps process them in the process. One of my most prominent thoughts is this — when I get up in the morning, it is going to be a Monday morning, and I am going to start my day like I always do, but something is going to be different…
My daddy will be home.
He’s not going to go to work.
He won’t leave and then come back not knowing what has happened here. He won’t go off to a place I’ve never seen (and therefore can’t imagine), to do things I’ve only ever heard of. He is going to see our life. He will hear the conversations that explain why it’s not hard to imagine why we haven’t accomplished much (but show the wonderings of our hearts and explains how we gather the knowledge we do). He’ll see all our random moments of “hey, there’s something we don’t know, so let’s learn it”. He will see our fights. He will see our laughter.
And it’s not that he’s never seen any of this, because… he has, it’s just… this time is different. What makes it different is that instead of glimpses from the outside looking in… he is going to be in the middle of our craziness. He can really, truly experience it.
We’re going to have our dad back.
He’s going to be home.
I’m becoming emotional writing this. I’ve desired this since I was a child. I just never knew how much I wanted it as I do now that it is actually happening. I remember being little and waiting at the front door for his car to pull up and bring him back to us. I remember waking up early just to see him before his car drove him away again. I would sit there, looking out the window with some deep sorrow in my heart that I wouldn’t see him until late that day, and by then he’d be too tired to talk or interact much with me anyway. I would ramble off my adventures of the day… but I never felt heard. His mind was on work. I did understand the need to have an income, but I still didn’t like it. As I got older I would do whatever I could to be with him. Sit in a treestand for hours, go on errands with him, stay up late in his room until he would get so tired that he couldn’t stay awake anymore — and all of this felt like a constant competition with my siblings. But, I never wanted to compete with them over our own dad. Now we don’t have to theoretically. Because he won’t be gone. He’s not driving away all day. He doesn’t have to.
Everyone I know respects my dad. I respect my dad. His presence kinda demands respect. But because of that I’ve always been proud of the fact that he’s my dad. It’s not that he’s perfect (because I know he’s not – trust me) but he is Jonathan Peyton and he’s my dad. And he’s home.

?*you’re* never going back, the past is in the past…?

So… welcome home, Daddy.