Risa Dale was never called princess by her dad. Instead, he handed her some tools and she destroyed a house.
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“How do you feel about demolition?”
The voice on the other end of the phone was my college buddy Mark—he’d just bought a fixer house. He’d married my best friend’s gay brother’s girlfriend’s sister. Yes, I’ll wait here while you go back and read that again… Got it?…
Excellent—let’s continue.
He didn’t have to ask me twice—destroying shit was always fun.
So, I pulled up to his house on an autumn day, a tiny cottage on the shore of a man made lake. We stood together eying the wall, the heft of the sledgehammer in my hand was easy. The 20lb trays I lifted over my head almost every day of the week while waitressing my way through college (again) made the sledgehammer feel light.
Without hesitation, I swung the sledgehammer and BOOM—part of a wall gone. Boom, boom—a few more boards down to the studs. Ancient dust and spiders set free from their walled prisons skittered. Now, it was ready to be the next thing.
After, we celebrated with adult beverages, and I called dad to bask in his approval.
One of four kids, I was his only daughter.
He never, ever called me princess.He did call me Deetsy, a contraction of the three syllable mouthful that didn’t quite fit me.
All teenagers are awkward—it’s all those hormones and expanding body parts. I compounded it by being both smart and a smartass. Dad was pretty much the only person in the state of New Jersey that liked me. I think it was because I fought with him, challenged any assumption he would put out and debated. I also wasn’t afraid of him.
At work, first he was the guy who made the paint, then the guy who sold the paint, and finally the guy who was in charge of telling other people how to make and sell the paint.
When I was a tot he took me to work with him and took me onto the production floor. The clank of machinery can still conjure that vast space, filled with gruff men in jumpsuits who greeted me politely.
At home, he was an old school Dad.
That meant he was the ultimate authority and dispenser of approval.
All four of us jostled for his attention. So, if you wanted to hang out with him, you had to put your hands to what he was doing.
He built/fixed stuff. Decks, patios, roofs,walls – there wasn’t anything he didn’t have a tool for. They lived in his cool, dark cave lined with pegboard. Cans of oils and epoxies, paints and powders sat on the floor, the metallic chemical smell was the bottom note of the garage perfume.
A 1985 garage in suburban New Jersey was not exactly the setting for girl power.
I don’t think my Dad had any agenda—he was a pretty conservative guy. He once told me because he had never treated a woman with disrespect, there was no way that anyone else did. I argued this point with him. There was an element of almost maniacal fairness in my upbringing- we all got the same treatment. Not the same chores, but there was an expectation that we would work for the good of the household.
There has never been a moment in my adult life that I thought because I was a girl—I couldn’t.
Saturday morning was set aside for trips to Channel, the local do-it-yourself center. It was one of the first DIY places, and in researching this story I come to find out they tried to strong arm Home Depot out of their territory.
There was always a rosary in the console of the car, testament to dad’s conversion to Catholicism to marry my mother. The trips to Channel started when my legs stuck straight out from the seat. They ended when I started wearing heels more than sneakers.
His car was a solid generic sedan, nothing flashy.
There was always a hard hat rolling around in the the back seat. Frequent trips to shipyards and other less hospitable places to push the paint made it the headwear of choice.
Dad would flick the dial on his sacred pre-sets, the A.M. station would fill the car with soft rock, silencing Paul Harvey’s nasal conservatism. We would have Very Important Conversations, where I would be the flaming liberal, and he would humor me. For that, I would not mention to mom that he smelled of cigarettes, or that I saw the McDonald’s bag in the back seat.
When we went home, I helped him wallpaper, paint, spackle, and sand. There were moments of using a level, the mysteries of the phillips head versus the flat head, the joy of a screw that goes in the right place the first time. The feel of sweat inside your gloves as you gripped a board and someone on the other side helped you pull it into place.
I tried to find one moment to describe how it made me feel…
What was so special? Basically, he was always there—even when he wasn’t, or was sick, or even when he passed away. His regularity as a human who could be relied upon made me want to be a human that could be relied upon, in any context. As much as he taught me how to handle a tool- he taught me how to think for myself. The ability to trust my own judgement has allowed me to do things I never even dreamed of as child.
In my mind’s eye, I can still see him in his sleeveless t-shirt and the shorts mom kept throwing out, a cigar clenched on one side of his mouth circling, smoke around his head.
When I moved out, he took me out to the garage and gave me a hammer. It still fits my hand perfectly, the balance and weight make perfect strikes. Each hit of the hammer I make takes me back to dad’s cave.
To this day, when I want to feel at home, I go to Home Depot and breathe in the scent of raw lumber. It is soothing to me like I imagine incense is to priests and nuns.
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