ALWAYS THERE

	I don't have any horror stories about my father.  No repressed 
memories or anything like that.  He fed us, he clothed us, he loved us.  And 
made it seem as simple as that.
	My uncle, his younger brother, was bitter and restless.  Once when my 
cousin got angry at me, she said, "Your father is boring!  He doesn't want to do 
anything but get along!  Daddy says he's a complete failure!"  She thought she'd 
upset me with this.  But instead I laughed.  Just laughed my heart out.  Because 
my father was exactly who he wanted to be.  I couldn't believe she didn't see 
that.
	Her father was hardly there.  My uncle left her and her mother and 
sister when she was small.  Supposedly because he had this big opportunity to 
do a film. It never happened.  But even when he moved back here, he never did 
move back with them.
	It's true, I suppose, to the outside world.  Now that I'm older, I know 
that.  He's never done anything important.  At least to anyone else.  But my 
sister's got three kids, my brother's just had his first, and I'm getting married 
next month.  Because we all want families like the one we grew up in.  We want 
to build new rooms on that first solid house, a house where we came home and 
our father was always there.

COPYRIGHT 1997, Jim Chevallier