Last Sunday morning, as Father's Day dawned, my beloved father, Dixie Townsel, passed away. After driving himself to the ER on Easter Sunday, his descent into the extreme illness and pain that marked his battle with the advanced stages of metastatic small-cell lung cancer proved to be heartbreakingly, breathtakingly, mind-numbingly rapid. By the time he drew his last breath, his passing was a blessing.
As I sit here wrapped in the quilt Sara R., her sister and her family of Kos elves so beautifully cobbled together in the weeks since my early diary about my father's illness, I am still unable to stop crying for any length of time. Surrounded by all of your heartfelt messages of support, though, I am returning here to celebrate my relationship with him and the guidance he gave me that continues to shape the person I am and will be.
More below.
For the last 12 weeks, I've been so absorbed by my partnership with my sister to take the best possible care of my father that I have not yet written here that I'm in the process of changing professions. In April, I was officially accepted into the Dallas Independent School District's Alternative Certification program -- so I've been spending every waking moment not related to Dad's care getting grounded in this accelerated summer program that leads to my first clasroom, and my first year of teaching, this August. No one was more pleased and proud about my decision to begin teaching than my education-minded father, who has pushed me to enter the classroom for the better part of a decade.
On the first day of class two weeks ago, we were asked to write an autobiography to share with our fellow classmates. With my father weighing so heavily on my mind and spirit, my autobiography became a celebration of the life philosophy we both shared: Life is too short to spend a single moment not learning something. I offer up that paper now, in the spirit of joyous remembrance of my father, the love of my life:
Hello, I’m Melody Townsel. And I’m pig-headed. Obstreperous. Obsessive. Single-minded. If that sounds like the start of a 12-step program, it probably should be. I’m largely all of those things at once, and primarily in pursuit of one thing: Knowing more. It probably sounds self-serving in a course like this, but I can honestly say that a thirst for knowledge – sparked by a father who loved learning and the Socratic method – is the one thread that ties together every life choice I’ve ever made.
A life of firsts
From my early years in Biloxi, Mississippi, to a career stint in now civil-unrest-ravaged Kyrgyzstan, I’ve been brought up to think for myself, question authority and reject the status quo. That’s the attitude that drove me to become the first child in my extended family to attend college. The first – and, still, only – member of my immediate family to travel extensively abroad (not counting the Irish diaspora, of course). The first woman in my family to brave single parenthood. The only woman in my family to own my own home.
My father was born and raised in Arkansas – abjectly poor, and determined not to follow in the footsteps of the indentured servants, day-laborers, sharecroppers and land-poor farmers that preceded him. The oldest of six kids raised in a one-room shack, poverty forced him to join the service immediately after receiving his high-school diploma. He regrets to this day his inability to attend college, and it was that regret that drove him to push me, his book-loving oldest daughter, to go anywhere my mind – and, back then, my legs – could take me.
Growing up, my fondest memories of my old man are of long, late-night car trips, talking in half-whispers while the rest of the family slept about everything from black holes to the infield fly rule to God to Watergate. If there was something I didn’t know, Pop demanded that I look it up. Read a book. Take a course. Go to the library. Money was tight enough that every purchase was thoroughly weighed and vetted; the one impulse buy I remember my father making was a complete set of World Book Encyclopedias and Childcraft, bought on an installment plan from a door-to-door salesman.
Skin in the game
When I was six, my father dragged his old military issue sleeping back down to the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, spending a miserably cold night drinking lukewarm coffee from a thermos and chatting with other parents as determined as he was to win a coveted slot at Museum School. When I headed off for my first day, he was as thrilled and proud as if I’d begun Harvard – and, when I brought home the class silkworms, he happily drove me around the neighborhood to beg, borrow and, occasionally, steal mulberry leaves to feed them.
The summer I turned seven, I won the mayor’s reading challenge, reading more books – and passing a test on each one – than any other kid in Fort Worth. My dad carried the newspaper clip around in his wallet until it finally disintegrated while I was in college.
When I moved up to the double-digits at the library check-out desk, my Dad quietly replaced the basket on my bicycle with a bigger one to make the haul back home easier. Without my asking. And when my mother began to yell at me to stop reading and turn the lights out, Dad snuck me a flashflight -- and secretly replaced the batteries so I never had to end a chapter unsatisified.
When I came home from Sunday school, asking questions about the reasons God would deliberately exclude the Buddhists from his plans, Dad directed me to go find – and read – a book on world religions. And when that book was the start of my questioning, and then moving away from, the faith of my childhood, he never blinked.
Changing the rules
The day I came home with a B on a physics paper because it was hand-written and not typed (we didn’t own a typewriter), Dad marched me up to the principal and, then, the school board, backstopping me at every turn as I successfully -- and independently -- demanded a long-needed rule change that reinstated my rightful A.
Every time an interest cropped up, Dad found me a mentor – and pushed me to explore. When I expressed interest in piano, a teacher one block away magically appeared, ready to teach me in exchange for mowing her lawn. When I began to paint, an artist from the local college and our small subdivision began dropping by the house for coffee – and offering to take me to museums and craft shows. While we talked about art and she directed my work, my Dad would wash her car. Or tune it up. Or fill up a tire.
For the five years I attended college and, then, graduate school, Pop happily loaded up the car, hauling me and my milk crates both directions. When I called to tell him I had just won a job with the Asian Wall Street Journal in Hong Kong, Pop uncomplainingly dropped everything and helped me load my stuff into a mini-warehouse and pack for the airport.
When I told him I was leaving Hong Kong for Kyrgyzstan, then Kazakstan, then Uzbekistan, then Russia, then Brazil, then Puerto Rico, and, then, New York, Dad was my biggest cheerleader. As my career morphed from journalism to public education to public relations to freelance writing, Dad never once questioned, always encouraged, was always interested in what was driving my choices.
Making Dad proud
As I write this, Dad is dying of cancer. He moved to Graham, Texas, to live with my sister just before the seminars for this program began. As always, his first and only concern is that I do this program well. Make this career transition. Do my best to pass on the love of learning that he instilled in me. It’s a mission we share, it encompasses everything about our relationship, and it defines me and, now, my 10-year-old daughter, Sadie. Life is too short to spend a single day not learning something. It’s the bred-in-the-bone philosophy that is my father, Dixie Townsel’s, legacy, and it's my fervent hope that it is a philosophy that will inspire and inform my efforts in the classroom.
It has been an unbelievable ride, old man.
Peace out, Pop.