My Father Shakes Hands for Me

My father shakes hands for me. For the last seven years I have been plagued by a rather exotic neurologic affliction that causes me considerable pain upon certain kinds of touch. It affects all of the tall of me but my hands are a particular problem. Americans like to shake hands; it's how we greet one another.

Excuses for not shaking hands are often difficult to concoct. Some days I carry my purse in one hand and, removing an item from it, carry the extracted item in the other hand. If I am lucky enough to be at a reception, I hold a plate and a glass. I can pretend to be a germaphobe - and I am, really, but admitting this to strangers just announces your pathologies unnecessarily. I am not a fist bumper, because it, like handshakes, hurts me, turns me red, gets on my last nerves. Besides, Howie Mandel has that all wrapped up. Since I am not an entertainer or national personage, I have no reputation that gives me leave to hone my greeting. Consequently, as I am also missing a large and adoring staff to prime a devoted audience for me, I've as yet defined no preferred manner of personal physical greeting. But trust me: I have a killer smile.

And hands that I don't extend. Usually. So my father shakes hands for me.

"Hi!, its nice to meet you, Lora-Ellen!" A hand is extended in greeting.

My father's hand meets that hand to a confused look. "I shake hands for her," he says. My father and I smile. This is now a practiced habit with us. But it catches everyone else off-guard.

And that, as they say, is that. Because parents show love in the ways that work best for their children. And that is what works for me.

When there was a terrible snowstorm in Seattle - in the days when snow in Seattle was as unnatural as the possibility of monthly natural disasters - and I was a lanky 6 foot tall, 85 pound 11 year old, I had an illness that required that I be taken to the hospital. Though our back door was blocked by an 8 foot snowdrift, my father became Superman. The door unblocked, he carried me in his arms through the storm to the car and drove me to the hospital. That was the way I needed love then and that was how he showed it.

When I was ill at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York and was a lanky, 6 foot, one inch tall, 115 pound 20 year old student who needed parental attention, my father drove up to my dorm exactly 8 hours following my call. This meant that he packed and left the house immediately. He got on the first possible plane that took him anywhere in the vicinity of New York City and then drove to my school and me. That was the way I needed love then and that was how he showed it.

There have certainly been times that my father has shown me wonderful examples of love that have had nothing to do with illness.

There was the delicious time that my father and I hovered in the corner of the laundry room for hours building a fantastic kite. We hammered the kite's balsa wood frame into a perfectly irregular diamond, stretched colored paper over it and braided long ropes for its tail. We took our beautiful creation across the street from the house to the park and launched it on a breeze where it floated for mere seconds before Seattle's winds turned to rains. Our kite folded. Its colors ran. It whipped and twisted. I cried. My father reeled it in. He said that kites make all manner of trips through the sky and that this drippy, curvy, tangled route was one such journey. Then we jogged home and had soup and read stories. My father had very little time for play so I remember this day when I was about six as a delectable memory. My father's save of our mangled kite was the way I needed love then and that was how he showed it.

Then there was the time when my father, who is terrified of water, entered a swimming pool to do water aerobics because I did it daily and told him that it was excellent for improving health. He stayed in the water for the entirety of my hour-long class. That was how he showed his love then.

I don't know what I will do when he is not around.

But until then, because a daughter always needs her father, my father shakes hands for me.

And I love him for it.