The Man Who Chose Me
A Father’s Day letter to the one who taught me kindness, safety, and how to find the right tool.
I didn’t call him “Dad” until I was twelve.
It just slipped out one day, over a conversation about a waterbed of all things. “Please, Daddy, can I have it?” My mom thought I was being manipulative. But it wasn’t a ploy. It wasn’t calculated. It just came out—natural, honest, true. Because by then, he was my dad. In every way that mattered.
His name was Bill. He came into our lives when I was just about five. Three girls, still trembling from a life that didn’t know safety. Still flinching from men. Still unsure if love could be trusted.
We hated him at first. Hell, we were downright cruel to him at times. We didn’t have the words for it then, but I think we were terrified of believing he could stay. That he wouldn’t hurt us.
But he did stay.
He showed up, day after day, year after year. Gentle, patient, unshakable. He married our mother, a woman carrying her own deep wounds, and he loved her the way she deserved to be loved. He didn’t just marry her. He took on all of us.
He chose us.
He chose me.
And when you’ve lived your whole life feeling like a burden or a problem to be managed, being chosen like that, it rewrites something in your bones.
My dad didn’t have any biological kids. But if you saw us together, you’d think we were related. People used to say, “She looks just like you.” And we’d just smile at each other, our own private joke. Maybe it was the matching blue eyes. Maybe it was the way we moved through the world, tender but stubborn, steady in the face of breakdowns (emotional or mechanical).
He was a mechanic. A teacher. A fixer.
He let me hang out with him in the garage for hours, never shooed me away, never worried I’d mess anything up. He taught me how to change a tire, how to listen for what's wrong under the hood, how to figure it out for myself.
But even more than that, he taught me how to think outside the box.
He was always inventing little fixes. I still find MacGyvered tools in his old toolbox. Strange little inventions made from multiple tools combined into one. He was creative like that. Unconventional. Brilliant in ways no manual could teach.
One of my favorite memories: him leaning under the hood of a car with his ear pressed to a giant screwdriver. When I asked what he was doing, he said, “That’s how I can tell if something’s vibrating. Helps me find what’s loose.”
He saw solutions where most people saw problems. He trusted his own way of listening.
That’s something I carry now. I find myself looking for loose parts. Not just in machines, but in people. In stories. In systems. I think I got that from him.
And then there was his kindness.
That’s what stuck most. It wasn’t something he preached. It was just how he lived. He helped everyone. It didn’t matter if they were struggling, stuck, or completely lost. He’d show up with a wrench, a joke, a ride, a hand. He saw people, all people, as worthy of care.
He passed this powerful trait to me. This desire I have to help. To make the hard things a little easier. To show up, even when it’s messy. That’s him, living in me.
When he died five years ago, I shattered.
Not just from the loss of him, but from all the grief I had buried for two decades after my mom died. His death cracked something open in me that I had kept sealed off, hidden under the need to be strong, to be fine, to survive.
It was like everything I had avoided feeling came flooding in at once.
And I couldn’t live like that anymore, on autopilot, shut down, rushing through a life that didn’t feel like mine. The pain stripped everything away. And in the rubble, I started to meet myself for the first time.
What I craved more than anything was slow and quiet.
I didn’t want the noise anymore. I wanted breath. I wanted space. I wanted to feel what was true, even when it hurt.
I don’t feel him the same way I feel my mom’s presence. But sometimes, when I’m fixing something—or when I’m cursing and trying to find the right tool—there he is. Helping me find it. Helping me keep going.
Father’s Day can be so complicated. For some, it’s a joyful celebration. For others, it’s hollow, sharp, unbearable.
To the ones who are missing their dads this year: I see you. Whether your grief is loud and raw or quiet and buried, it counts.
To those who had a father who chose them, who showed them how to love better: I hope you remember the best parts today.
And if you never had that kind of father, if Father’s Day brings more ache than anything, I hope you find gentleness somewhere in your day. You deserved more.
As for me, I’ll spend the day thinking of Bill. The man who chose me. The man who taught me how to use a wrench, how to create something from nothing, and how to live with a soft heart.
I miss him. I always will.
But I carry him, too.