Some mornings still find me before I can rise, before light touches curtains or thought clouds my eyes.
And I’m small in a courtyard of weathered old stone where gargoyles keep watch like the whole place is their own.
I didn’t know tuition or schedules or pay, I just knew that my dad worked on campus each day.
And somebody made me a badge of my own, crimson and white with my small photo shown.
Two sisters beside me, our mom at our backs,
moving through corridors worn smooth in our tracks
of decades of footsteps and old, settled air,
that faint dusty sweetness of history there.
The buildings were busy, tall walls casting shade, gargoyles still watching like vows they had made. Stone faces high above us, unmoving, alone, as though all of Hawk Hill had a pulse of its own.
He moved through that campus with quiet command, coffee thermos gripped steady in one once free hand.
A man built to fix what most never saw break, who took the work he did seriously… understanding the stakes.
I didn’t know titles or what filled his days, or what he kept running behind walls of gray. But walking the paths where his footsteps once lay made the whole world feel steady, keeping chaos at bay.
Years later in darkness, I’d drive in snow or sometimes rain. Four-Twenty-Two pulsing like a slow, patient vein. Red brake lights blinking from bumper to hood, long rivers of headlights shining as far as they could.
“Then 76, where the highway would stall
for an hour, sometimes two, before Mandeville Hall.
I’d leave at five-thirty for an eight a.m. class,
coffee beside me and notes from the past.“
I’d park while the sky still refused to turn blue, sometimes sleep in my car, too tired to move.
Then wake to the ringing bells and the doors being unlocked, for the bell tower to carry the first eight o’clock.
And sometimes, while waiting in a brake-light parade, my phone would light up with the shortcut he’d made:
“Accident ahead.”
“Take City Line.”
“Exit the highway at Belmont; it’ll save you some time.”
He didn’t say love often; instead, he adjusted my lane.
He shortened my distance, he lessened my strain.
Most times smelling of coffee and a faint scent of smoke, strict with his structure, but can still tell a great joke.
Especially later, when heavy things hit, we handled our grief with a dry kind of wit; not loud, not theatrical, never rehearsed, just humor that rose when the feelings got worse.
“Because growing up isn’t loud when it finally shifts,
it’s deadlines and grades and intangible gifts.”
It’s wanting to prove what your bones always knew,
that the smallest effort has value, even when no one sees you.
My mom saw it early, that drive in my frame, the hunger to finish… no matter what came.
To start without certainty, map, or applause; she didn’t need speeches. She trusted the cause.
If my dad were the wiring hidden behind the walls, my mom was the warmth you’d feel moving through those same halls.
One built the structure that held under strain; the other brought compassion to soften the rain.
And somewhere between them, discipline, grace,
I’ve learned to steady my breathing and find a sustainable pace.
Then somewhere between who we were and became, the word “scan” entered, and nothing would ever be the same.
She fought once and won.
We allowed ourselves air,
let hope start to settle back into our hearts filled with care.
Then routine turned fragile.
The language grew thin.
The silence got heavier settling in.
“Lymphoma,” they said;
the room suddenly feeling small,
as though someone had dimmed every light in the hall.
And after the medicine, after the charts, after quiet defeats that settled in parts
We gathered for pizza and laughter and beer, four of us sitting so close with our fears.
We laughed about dating, the men I’d outrun,
about standards too high and not “having too much fun”.
There was sadness beneath it; but brighter than dread was the sound of us living while my mom’s illness spread.
We didn’t ignore it.
We just held the line, cracked jokes in the garage between sips of wine.
Not borrowed or scripted, not polished or neat, just humor we built on our unsteady feet.
And now you are walking a road with no map, a battle that shifts under memory’s gap.
“You may feel unheard.
You may feel alone.
Some fights can’t be shared,
only quietly known.“
I won’t pretend I can measure that space or claim I could fill your shoes fully if I stood in your place.
The closest I’ve come to that edge of control was nearly sixty-six miles toward what felt like a failed goal.
“Hornets at mile three.
A shot of Fireball at ten.
Then kidneys protesting again and again.I bargained for eighty.
I would not relent.
I had already decided what finishing meant.“
That refusal to fold when my body said “done”…
…was the grit you taught me, carried to the start of that run.
Through old stone windows and standards set high, you both taught me never quit, but always to try.
Again when it hurt.
Again when it bent.
Again when the outcome wasn’t what I had planned.
In the face of collapse.
In the face of defeat.
How to stand in the rain on my own two tired feet.
So here is the truth; steady and plain:
I am made of your grit and your humor through pain.
Of rerouted traffic. Of laughter through strain. Of finishing after starting.
Of seeing the beauty of the storm through the eyes of the rain.
“Not my circus. Not my monkeys,” you’d say with a grin.
But you showed me how canvas is fastened and pinned.
You both taught me that structure and softness align, that chaos can knock, but doesn’t have to define.
You said the monkeys weren’t yours.
And maybe sometimes they weren’t.
But you taught me to build to prepare for the weather at its worst.
So if life is a circus and the storms find me still,
I carry your courage, your strength, and your will.
And though I can’t reach you when the skies break again,
While you were once my shelter, you also taught me to build my own tent.
Copyright © 2026 Kimberly Beth Thomas. All rights reserved.
Author’s Note:
Daddy,
I still see you walking Hawk Hill with your thermos, fixing things no one else noticed were broken. You never needed applause. You just showed up and did the work well.
You didn’t say “I love you” a hundred times. You rerouted my mornings.
“Accident ahead. Take City Line.”
You shortened my distance. You eased the strain. That was your language — and I learned to speak it.
You taught me how to keep moving when the body says stop. How to let humor sit beside grief. How to hold the line when the silence gets loud.
I don’t know if these words will land the way I hope. But I need you to know that everything steady and stubborn and strong in me came from you.
I love you the way you taught me to: quietly, practically, and all the way through.
Your (favorite) daughter,
—Kim