Letting Go: A Father’s Story at His Daughter S Profession of Faith

WALTER WANGERIN, JR.Walter Wangerin, Jr., is a writer living in Evansville, Indiana. He was formerly pastor of that city’s Grace Lutheran Church. Wangerin’s latest book is The Orphean Passages (Harper & Row, 1986).

Talitha, duravisti! Talitha, thou hast endured, and thou art lovely: pulchra es, pulcherrima.

Child, you are nearly a woman after all. Tomorrow, the last of my four children, you will speak publicly your independent faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. No one will help you nor speak for you. You do this thing.

The days of your independence are at hand. But in the days of your childhood you did finally become my daughter, and you are, and you shall ever be—my daughter.

In one sense, the legal and divine sense, you were my daughter the moment we adopted you in an Indianapolis courtroom. That was binding from the beginning, and no one could snatch you out of our hands; we clung to you as tightly as any mother clings to her children in a crowd, fiercely, protectingly, proudly, cutting a way for you through senseless humanity, making a space for you to dwell in safely. You were ours from adoption, and we were yours by loving commitment.

But in another sense, the relational sense, I had to earn my fatherhood and win your daughterhood, while you endured the fumbling efforts and grew to trust me, then to love me, after all. These things could not be enforced by an adoption decree: “The child shall hereby adore her father heart to heart, or he shall have the right to bring suit against her, requiring affection by the power of the state—” Surely no parent is so juvenile as to presume love, or so mean-minded as to command it. Surely—?

Well, this parent never had the opportunity with you, Talitha, to be presumptive. You blew my illusions at the start.

I remember—

I remember seeing you for the first time in a private room of the agency’s office building. You lay face up and sleeping in a crib, eight months old, a huge head in the shape of a light bulb, perfectly round and smooth with black-hair scribbles on the top, a wondrous forehead, a miniature mouth, a little body utterly relaxed. Everyone smiled and whispered. I had a bit of a catch in my heart: no one there knew you, yet, except that you were lovely; and you would know no one there when you awoke. The baby was the stranger. She was sleeping. Whisper, people; respect her rest and her oblivion.

I remember leaning quietly into the crib, the better to see you, bringing my face very close to yours and smelling the milky innocence of baby’s breath. You whistled a little, because you breathed through your mouth.

Suddenly, inches from me, two enormous, deep brown eyes flew open, instantly awake. They tried for just a second to focus on my great head—and when they did, they flooded with panic and you, Talitha, began to scream. I pulled back immediately, but your eyes were fixed on me, and your little mouth had stretched to the size of terror, and you produced a truly expressive noise, like locomotive wheels locked and scraping railroad tracks. When I reached to comfort you, you only shrieked the louder. And stare you never-so-pleadingly about the room, you could not find one familiar face to assure you that everything was all right. My heart flew out to you. Your crying didn’t quit—not till Mom picked you up, and you clutched her neck, trembling.

Oh, but you looked warily upon me after that. When I drew too close, the shadow of fear fell across your face. No, I could not presume your love. I could not command your trust. I was the father of the baby; but the baby’s heart was kept from me, the baby’s heart suspected me. Beauty cannot love the beast in the beginning. I was the father, but you were not the daughter. Oh, Talitha! Such hard exercises we put you through so early on.

I remember—

I remember loving dearly the parchment color of your skin, but keeping myself from touching it. It was your mother whose touch you desired. And the size of your dark eyes took my breath away. And your infrequent giggle, coming from another room, blessed me like the rain: you could be happy! You had it in you to laugh. But once, you threw yourself away from a naked touch with the toilet, and wailed as though cold porcelain had been burning metal. I could neither ease you nor see into your secret past to understand why cold and heat could be confused or what your fears were.

But I remember—

I remember finally finding the key nearly a year later. It was eyebrows, your eyebrows and mine. When we sat at dinner, gazing at one another from a safe distance, I discovered that when I wiggled my eyebrows you wiggled yours in return.

Bingo! It was like asking a question and getting an answer, no words passing between. Oh, I wiggled my eyebrows after that till my forehead ached. I twisted them a thousand ways, and you answered. I told jokes with my eyebrows. I commented on the meal and the day with my eyebrows. I asked “How are you?” with my eyebrows, silently, silently. We held voluble conversations with nothing but eyebrows. And in the end, with my eyebrows I said, “I love you.”

And you answered, “I know.”

But it was with your willing kiss, when that began between us, that you said, “I love you too, Daddy.” My daughter from the beginning, you became my daughter indeed.

Cheap love, cheaply given and lightly received, cracks in the crisis; it isn’t built to bear the weight. But expensive love, slowly, carefully sold and dearly bought, is built like the oak: the crisis cannot blow it down. This is our love, Talitha.

Child, tomorrow you move toward womanhood; and I, who have carried you often since we learned our eyebrow-Latin, will begin to cease to carry you at all. I will only watch: watch with joy your initiation into adulthood; watch with some sorrow your departure from my bosom.

It’s a happy crisis, but a crisis nonetheless, when children leave childhood and then inevitably the home. It changes both the children and the parents—for how much of parenthood (which was so long my identity) is left? And the question troubles us: How much love will continue hereafter? Should I, should I continue to cling? Should I, keeping my old values and worth intact, cling? No, I shan’t, and I won’t. Because you, dear Talitha, have endured: duravisti! And because our love was dearly won, it will last this crisis, too, of your entering independence. I let you go. Something of you will never leave me.

How hard the waiting is, while we wait for love, loving without returns. But how durable is that love when finally it comes! And what beauty, Talitha pulcherrima, you will shed on the whole world now. Daughter, daughter mine—go in peace.

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