My most cherished memories of childhood were the times I spent with my dad watching football games.  Sports, and especially football, always fascinated me, and my dad couldn’t have been happier.  Football was his passion.  It also became mine.  He taught me everything he knew about the game and I was an eager student.  For the both of us, the start of football season was the most exciting time of the year.

Of course, my father would have been just as happy if I had preferred ribbons and bows and Barbie dolls to sneakers and bugs and bicycles.  I’m sure, though, he was secretly thrilled that I’d rather be right there next to him during kickoff than at the ballet classes my mother unsuccessfully tried to make me attend.

(Mom, on the other hand, never did forgive me for having a daughter who also refused to don the dreaded tutu in favor of a Little League uniform.  I’m sure it truly irked her that her only granddaughter wasn’t having any of that girly stuff, either.)

As far as I was concerned, there was no better ballet than the action on the gridiron.  The moment the ball was snapped and the play was on, it was pure poetry in motion.  A perfectly thrown and caught Hail Mary was (and still is) a thing of beauty.  Win or lose, there was no such thing as bad football.  On any given Sunday, Dad and I didn’t take our eyes off the TV or even leave the room until the clock ran out at the end of the fourth quarter.  Doing so was very bad juju.  We had our rituals, you see.

We both loved the Miami Dolphins, of course.  Especially the glorious undefeated season!  But my father also got me hooked on college football.  Gator football, to be exact.  I’m pretty sure his proudest moment as a grandpa was when my oldest son got accepted to Florida.  (Finally, Dad had a “legitimate” reason to root for the Gators.)  Beginning in September, our entire weekends were spent in pigskin heaven – on the couch or in a sports bar, screaming at the television.  Life was good.  Especially in the fall.

My father died a little over three years ago.  With every passing day I miss him more and more.  Even though I didn’t realize it until I was far into adulthood, my father was the most influential person in my life.  I certainly didn’t appreciate his wisdom when I was a young adult and thought I knew everything.  Even when all my “knowledge” landed me in one hot mess after another, my father never criticized me.  He was my silent rock and not so silent cheerleader – encouraging me to pick myself up, dust myself off and keep going.  And so I did.

One of the most important things my father drummed into me (other than football, of course) was that the glass ceiling was breakable.  He always said that a woman should never allow herself to be kept barefoot and pregnant.  Unless that’s what she wanted, of course.  My dad told me almost on a daily basis to follow my dreams wherever they led me, and to never let my gender limit my choices.  I’m pretty sure my dad was the only male champion of the feminist movement during an era when women were struggling for equality and men were mourning the death of Betty Crocker.  My father always rued the fact that “the smarter half of the human race” (his words, not mine) were excluded from being presidents or rabbis.  Sadly, he never saw a female president, but when women were finally allowed to enter rabbinical school he was thrilled.

I never doubted for one moment that my father loved me.  Whenever we’d call each other on the phone or see each other in person, the first thing he would say was, “Hello, my beautiful daughter!”  Or if he would introduce me to new friends and acquaintances, he would always say, “This is my beautiful daughter.”  He also never missed a chance to tell me how proud he was of me.

The real irony is that we weren’t related by blood.  He was actually my adopted father.  My so-called “real” father left when I was a baby and my mom remarried when I was only a toddler.

My dad loved to tell the story of how he met my mother.  He saw her pushing a stroller on Washington Avenue in Miami Beach, and asked her if she would go out with him when she was finished babysitting and took the baby back to her mother.  When she told him that she was the mother and that the baby wasn’t going anywhere, he said, “Well, I guess we’re all going out together then.”  My dad always wrapped up his story by saying that he quickly married my mom, adopted me, and he never once regretted leaving his bachelorhood behind.  He really never did look back.  I always loved to hear him tell this story.  It made me feel so special because he chose to be my dad.  Not because he had to, but because he wanted to.  My dad was the one person in my life who loved me unconditionally and without reservation.

Over the years, my father and I had many philosophical discussions that went on for hours and hours.  Throughout his life he struggled with a God who could, as he put it, “create a perfect miraculous machine like the human body,” and yet who could “allow six million Jews to be killed in the Holocaust.”  Dad had a hard time accepting the fact that even though we were made in God’s image, there are truly evil people in the world.  He reconciled his inner conflict by coming to the conclusion that God created free will, and he learned to be satisfied with that explanation.

In his final years during a six year battle with cancer, though, my father came to believe in and give thanks to a God who allowed him to wake up “one more day.”  And every evening he “selfishly asked God for just one more.”  Every day for those six years, when the sun came up, Dad embraced the day and found beauty in the most mundane of things, just grateful to be alive.  His joy was so infectious you couldn’t help but feel it, too.

In my father’s final days, he was so at peace with God and with life, he was content in knowing that his job here was done.  He was ready to move on to what he chose to believe was a better place.  He truly had no fear of death.

In mid-May of 2010, right before he slipped into the coma that signaled the end of his days on earth, my dad pulled me close and whispered his last words to me, “The Gators are going to win the Championship this season.  I just know it.  I can’t wait for football.  And, I love you so much, my beautiful daughter.”

He was right that he literally couldn’t, and in fact, didn’t wait for football season.  I’m not sure if he realized it at that point.  But what he did know was that his “beautiful daughter” was there with him and that I loved him.  Unconditionally and without reservation.

Even though he is physically gone, my dad’s memory continues to live on in my heart.  And as I approach another football season without him, I miss him just a little bit more than last season, and the season before that.  I don’t know if the Gators will win the BCS National Championship this time around, but because of the legacy of my dad’s incredible spirit of hope, joy of living, and love of the game, I choose to believe they will.

This year Florida will kick ass!

Go Gators!

Stephanie Kienzle
“Spreading the Wealth”