Cynthia Bythell Music

That’s what the townspeople called my Dad. I loved his huge toothy smile. He loved to play with my brothers and me, and he loved my Mom. I remember my parents dancing in the kitchen, holding hands, and sharing little kisses. Yes indeed, Dad was a true family man. My father grew up in poverty, and had worked his way through college with a wife and baby because he wanted to be well-able to support a family. When I was growing up, he worked hard at a locally high profile job, and he worked hard at home too. He was home every night and every weekend. My parents bought bargain houses, we moved in, and my Dad fixed them up around us. A few years later, they sold them for a handsome profit. It was their “put the kids through college” plan. At work, Dad’s secretaries used to love to race him by adding a long column of three digit numbers on an old fashioned adding machine, while he added them in his head. My Father always won. He was obviously brilliant. Everybody knew it but him. He insisted my mother was smarter than himself, turned his paycheck over to her, and followed her every lead… Many many years later, after my Mom passed, I finally got to know my Dad on a deeper level. He told me he had been a blue collar man in a white collar job, and wished he had become a plumber because he could have made just as much money without all the stress of local politics. He said he was glad he had children because he had enjoyed his kids an awful lot. Dad also said he never did figure out what a woman so beautiful and smart as my mother, was doing with him. After spending one day a week with my dad for several years, it was easy to understand what she saw in him. Beyond his apparent intelligence and good looks, and despite a bit of gruffness, he was gentle, humble, loving, straight-forward, extremely generous, and held women in great respect. As an adult, I grew to love my Dad more than ever… Eventually dementia took his mind, but he never lost his smile.