My father passed away on February 25th, 2021, in a peaceful death at home. My dad was such an important person in shaping the bookish person I was to come. For his memorial, I’m reading this revised version of “I Am the English Teacher’s Daughter,” an essay I wrote for Father’s Day on Book Riot in 2016.
The revised essay appears below.
It happens even now, more than a decade into retirement.
“Hey, Dr. D!”
My dad’s former students, sometimes from decades ago, will recognize my father everywhere, whether it’s in the local Wawa getting hoagies, on a beach in Maine, or over the phone in a telemarketing call. My English teacher father, now retired, taught the full range of students at our local high school for 40 years, everything from A.P. classes to college prep to electives on vocabulary building (his “Word Power” students have a special handshake). My dad, himself the child of two English teachers, who were themselves the children of teachers, had a gift inherited by my brother and sister, both teachers, for reaching students who so many had given up on. He believed in every one of his students and gave them confidence that they were absolutely capable of drawing parallels between Romeo and Juliet and their own lives. If ever there was a real-life teacher like Robin Williams in Dead Poet’s Society, it was my dad.
Growing up, my parents, both readers, took us out to Borders every Friday night so they could listen to live, local bands and my brother and I could run around the store.. Little Women, Roald Dahl, Shel Silverstein…ever the daddy’s girl, I’d often convince my dad to not only buy my one book, but two, or even three, if I was good. We’d head home when Borders closed at 11, my dad carrying me out to the car where I’d fall asleep, my latest book clutched in my tiny hand as I’d rest my forehead against the cool glass. The family of a teacher, we never slept in on weekends. Saturday mornings, we’d wake up bright and early, and my dad would cook pancakes. For me, Saturdays and Sundays were spent almost exclusively reading, 48 blessed hours where I could read however much I wanted.
Saturdays and Sundays. And Mondays and Tuesdays and Wednesdays and Thursdays and Fridays at 5:00 AM by the light of a flashlight before I officially woke up, and in every spare moment between classes, and even during classes if I was sneaky enough, and after school, and after dinner, and after dark. I read. And read. And read.
And my father? He encouraged it.
As the years passed, my love for literature didn’t let up. I didn’t “grow out of it,.” When I went on vacation with friends, I didn’t care about gossiping about boys (unless they were Mr. Darcy). I just wanted to read—anything. One memorable summer before freshman year of high school, I read J.D. Salinger’s cult classic: The Catcher in the Rye in its hardcover student copy with a mustard-colored binding.. I devoured the novel at my friend’s lake house. Enthralled, I was too busy reading about my new hero Holden Caulfield—(in sulky teen voice): the only person to truly “get” me—to water ski. Instead, I puzzled over my dad’s question to me about the cult classic: “But is any of it real?”
Throughout my teenage years, I walked the halls of my high school under the cloud of my father’s legacy. He’d retired just before I started at Strath Haven, and the hallways would part for his little awkward daughter who upperclassmen would say looks just like their beloved Dr. Davis. Teachers would never fail to remind me how my father mentored them and encouraged them. I was just trying to define myself in relation to his godlike presence.
But my dad wasn’t gone entirely. I’d see him watching me through the window of my English class. He supervised student teachers for years after retiring, and if he happened to be in the neighborhood, he’d look in on me, smiling, happy and proud of me.
I graduated high school and started at Columbia University. I wanted to distance myself from the so-called “Dead White Men” my father taught, though back in the shelves of my dorm room, I still had my father’s treasured Major British Writers textbook on my shelf. That first week of classes, I was so intimidated by my Accelerated Latin class, I ran teary-eyed to the English department offices like I was fleeing a burning building. I desperately asked them if any English classes were still open. I chose 17th-century Prose and Poetry. When I needed a sounding board for my essay on John Donne’s “The Ecstasy,” I called my father. We went through the poem line by line, and I wrote my way to an A on the paper after I formulated my own thoughts from our discussions. Very impressive, my professor wrote. My collegiate career as an English major had begun, but that was the last time I’d ask Dad for a consult. My training wheels were off, and I was eager to develop a voice and analytical perspective of my own.
Eventually I transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, the same institution where my father had earned his doctorate in education. In fact, he met my mom at a bar half a block away from my dorm. I still loved to catch the train home for a weekend visit to tell my dad what I was learning. Even though I was still awkward and painfully shy, I came alive in my English classes.
Now I live with my parents. We moved to a new house where I have an amazing office. It looks out onto a garden and further on to a forest. My books can breathe in ample storage space.
And I can keep an eye on my dad. He’s getting older. Sometimes he falters in reciting a Shakespeare monologue, and he doesn’t read many novels anymore because his eyes bother him. However, a true intellectual, he hungrily reads The New York Review of Books and The New Yorker. I joke around with him about how he’s the only person alive who actually reads The New York Review of Books, and maybe that’s true.
My dad has never doubted me. He knew I’d find a way to build a life of my own around literature even though I never had the teacher gene. I might not have that one. But I have plenty of his.
For years my father always told me that he would always be with me if I looked in the mirror, that I’d see him there in my reflection. I spent a lot of my adolescence thinking I wanted to distinguish myself from him because I was swallowed up in his shadow, but over 33 years I’ve become a version of him I am proud of. I look up from my desk now, the one he put together for me, and I see the wind rustle through the trees through the window. There are books stacked on the ledge. In that glass I see myself, ambitious, nerdy, confident, bookish, with his hair and eyes. I may not have my father’s teaching career, and we may not be referencing the same canon anymore, but I have his analytical skills, his love for literary debate, and his passion for how books can save lives. I am the English teacher’s daughter. I am him and I am not him. I am myself, which is exactly what he wants for me.
