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I’m the youngest of five kids. I have three older brothers and one older sister, so by birth order that makes me number five or “the baby”. Despite the fact that I’m 34, married with two children and working full time, I’m still “the baby”. I think it’s a unique experience for my siblings to watch me grow and evolve as a person/wife/mother, but perhaps it’s more significant for my parents, maybe even more so for my dad. My dad still reminisces about the time when I was three months old, he put a bottle in his back pocket and took me to church. Naturally I don’t remember that, but he remembers like it was yesterday. One of the first memories I have involving my dad is when I was three or four. He would regularly give me a bath, wash my hair, wrap me up in a towel and put me to bed. I remember during the grade school years we would read books, make paper airplanes, play cards (double solitaire was our favorite) and during the summer, make chocolate milkshakes and swim at the community pool. It was a fairly simple, easy relationship to maintain. Then one day, as all girls do, I became a tween and entered Jr. high. It seemed like overnight I was injected with a large dose of attitude and my parents became uncool. For about four years, I had a limited vocabulary and answered every question that my dad would ask with ‘fine, good, okay” or “I dunno”. We had some awkward and uncomfortable moments, but I was always excited to bring home a good report card and did everything I could to hide the bad ones. Math and science did not come easy to me and I can remember sitting at the kitchen table with my dad agonizing over math problems. We made it through…barely.  

Throughout college and into my young adult years, we maintained a relationship that I was familiar with. My parents would host major holidays and family gatherings.  My mom would always have home cooked meals and my dad would still change the oil in my car. Over the past few years, however, I’ve noticed a gradual shift. I’m able to give back to them, host family parties at my house, cook and provide a place to sleep. It didn’t really dawn on me about how our relationship was changing until recently. My dad was diagnosed with prostate cancer in December. Luckily, they caught it early and it’s not life threatening. Nonetheless, it was a rude and unpleasant reminder that my dad has more years behind him, than he does in front of him. He had an outpatient procedure done a few weeks ago. I was able to drive him home from the hospital, provide him with food and help him recuperate. Again, this was another shift. As a kid, I was used to him nursing me back to health from an illness.  

As our relationship evolves, there’s still one constant – my dad is a wonderful, charming and gracious man. He has taught me many valuable lessons, perhaps most importantly he’s taught me to appreciate and learn from life’s experiences. I suppose in my dad’s eyes I will always be his baby, but in my opinion, that’s not a bad place to be.