Immortality

Memories of My Daddy

We don’t have a choice as to when or where we are born or to what family we are given. I was blessed to have been dropped off in Texas and placed into the loving arms of Jack and Joyce Davis on a cold December night in 1947. I was the second of Mom and Dad’s six offspring, and, as one of the oldest, I learned, at an early age, about the responsibility that comes with this senior rank. I was seven years old when my twin brothers, Jack and Jerry, came along. The family was growing and there would be more to come. That’s when Daddy changed my nick-name from Princess to Green-eyed Monster. Though I do have green eyes, I never understood what that meant until I got a little older, but I knew it couldn’t be too bad because the name always made Mama laugh.

Dad worked at a cotton compress where they pressed cotton into bales for shipment to textile mills. He wore a dress-shirt and tie because he worked in the office. Many Saturday mornings, he would take me to work with him, just to give me a break from the twins. To this day, I can still smell the wood and lead shavings from the freshly sharpened pencils the men used to log in entries and balance the books. There were no computers or electric calculators. The accountants used huge, metal adding machines which were operated manually with a lever on the side. Dad usually disregarded these slow machines and added the columns of figures in his head.

Dad worked long, hard hours, but he was always there for me with a hug and a silly joke. He drove an old, black 1948 Chevy, and I remember waiting for him on the front porch in the early evenings. Sometimes he’d stop after work and buy me a Delaware Punch. He’d hand me the cold bottle, go inside and get himself a Jax beer, and come back out on the porch to watch the sun set with me. Sometimes he’d play catch with me and my older brother in the cool grass which he kept perfectly trimmed.

We didn’t have a television back then. Some Sunday evenings, Dad would put a Frank Sinatra album on the Hi-fi, and he would teach me how to dance. I’d put my little, bare feet on top of his shinny, wing-tipped Florsheims, and off we’d go around the tiny living room. In his arms, I felt protected and loved.

I’m thankful God chose to place me in the hands of such a good man. What I’d give for a chance to dance with Daddy just one more time.