- Lost Foundations -

Loss of a Hero

The little girl grinned, biting her lip gently between her teeth as she pushed her small, tanned foot into the dull black combat boots, ten sizes too large. She smiled more, using the battered armchair to push her self up, feeling like an astronaut in the boots. Dressed in a fading blue T-shirt that hung down to her knees, the black combat boots, a leather belt and a red bandanna that smelled like heaven to her, the girl clomped slowly from the bedroom and into the kitchen of the little house on Marine Drive. She grinned, sticking a finger in her mouth as she clomped up behind the man that blocked out the sun for her, her hero. The large man turned around and grinned, his eyes lighting up behind his glasses. "Well now Miss Humphrey, what have you gotten into?" The little girl beamed, in all six-year-old innocence and said simply, "I'm daddy." -- I remember that memory, that moment, and several others clear and fresh as the day they were created. Moments in time that the world slowed time stopped, and my world was perfect. He still owns those shoes, that shirt, that belt. The smell is still as strong and rich and still marks him as daddy. He still looks the same, acts the same, and talks the same. He still is…daddy. But something else has changed, some little moment, action, feeling that has changed my whole world. He is no longer my hero, no longer the man that towers over all others and blocks out my sun. And that is the pain, known as the loss of a hero. -- The teenager stared at her father, anger flashing in her eyes. Her hands clenched and un-clenched at her sides, really wanting to plant themselves into the man's face as he yelled at her. The man noticed her fists and laughed. "You can't touch me. You don't want to go to jail again." "The cops can't do anything to me, I'm a minor." "They can lock you up and you won't see you're mother again!" The teenager rolled her eyes and gave her father a smile that could chill the warmest of hearts. "Try it." The man stared at her, eye to eye. They were two sides of a same coin now, a woman on the very edge of adulthood, staring at her equal, a man that pound for pound, outweighed her by 200lbs, but a man she could and would take on if the next moment when to hell. A man, once a god and now simply, a man, flawed, weak, and angry. -- I would have decked my father in that moment. It had taken 17 years to realize how far we had fallen since I was a little girl, how...alike we were. This was the man that had given me my sense of humor and love of being wild and crazy, but this was also the same man that had given me my quick temper, my violent nature, my tendency to piss people off within five minutes of meeting them, and here we were, facing each other down, waiting for one of us to strike the first blow. I had long ago learned that my mother could not make a stop light change colour by blowing on it or heal a wound with her kiss, but I hadn't realized my father was no longer my father, but someone I couldn't stand to be in the room with longer then five seconds. I went from being daddy's little girl to being daddy's enemy and that was an awakening that nearly destroyed me inside. -- It's Christmas time again, the time of year meant for family and friends. But for me, it's another Christmas passed when my father forgets he has another daughter. Chapter one of his life had ended when I was seven, and he's moved on to Chapter two. But unfortunately for him, Chapter one doesn't just curl up and die as he wishes. I am still here, still waiting for the time when he wakes up and remembers me. For the time when he becomes again, my hero. Fin