My Fathers Daughter

My dad is an artist of the most spectacular nature. He’s my dad. So, of course, I think he is brilliant.


He is though.

Truly.

Hand on a stack of bibles.

Brilliant.

I traveled with my dad to the Peoria Fine Art Fair recently. He was representing his art over a weekend. I know, I know. Peoria. It’s a bit of an oxymoron. What do the people of Peoria know about fine art? Judging by the number of craptastic $40 “lawn art on a stick” I saw people walking around with, not much.

In any case, due to a complicated labyrinth of circumstances, my mom was unable to attend the show and I stepped in to pinch hit.

The prospect of traveling with him was a little more than daunting. Frankly, I was afraid of getting yelled at. Loudly. My dad is great and wonderful but he can have an impossibly short fuse and does this thing where he grits his tongue between his teeth when he gets impatient. I had flashbacks to being 12 years old, standing in the garage while my dad had me hold some impossibly heavy car part so he could measure it while simultaneously yelling at me for not holding “still” enough. Never-mind that I was a 12 year old, 85 pound skinny girl with virtually no muscle tone holding a piece of Ford Coupe bumper equal to my body weight. I’m just saying. There is some history there that fed my current anxiety about 4 days in Peoria.

I could provide a lot of unnecessary details about the weekend, the 6 hour setup process, the tense tear down where I was yelled at (but only once), the rain, the cold, the wind and the drunk artist in the booth next to us. All are seemingly irrelevant.

The most illuminating moment of the weekend came when we were crossing the street on our way from the parking lot to the art fair. My dad was two steps ahead of me and he reached back to take my hand like any parent does for their child when crossing the street. Despite the fact that we are 42 and 63 respectively and I know he gets that I am a grown up woman with a child of my own; I am still his child. So when he reaches back, I take his hand. He is my dad. I am my father’s daughter.