For My Dad

When I was eight years old, my dad and I built a Harry Potter castle. It was approximately 30 square feet with four walls sponge painted to represent bricks, and it had a tower coming off the top right corner. It had a ceiling, on top of which we put a mattress (with Harry Potter sheets), and it was here that I spent so many nights of my youth. Until, of course, I needed more space for my Harry Potter Lego sets, at which time we removed the mattress and I set up my mystical world on top of my own little castle pushed into a corner in my basement.

The summer after our major construction endeavor, my dad took me on a "backpacking trip" (our trip involved one night of camping and a total hike of about 4 miles over the course of two days, thus my use of quotation marks). As we were hiking in, my alien pack pulled me backwards into a mountain spring, and by the time we reached our campsite it was snowing. I curled up in my sleeping bag, the tent sheltering me from the downpour of rain and snow and sleet, while my dad made hot chocolate and spaghetti outside.

My junior year of high school I became a hipster. Each night of Hanukkah that year, I unwrapped a different series of bicycle parts that my dad had scavenged from garage sales and bike shops around Denver. Together, we built a fixed gear bicycle with bright blue wheels and streamers coming off the handlebars. Today, this bike is my second most prized possession (the first is my backpacking pack, of course).

That same winter, my dad coached my cross-country ski team every Sunday and took me alpine skiing every Saturday. In his twenties, he coached one of the best youth Nordic teams in Colorado, and that winter he told me that he saw great potential for my cross-country skiing future. I told him that I was burnt out from skiing and I didn't want to do it anymore. He understood.

Jump to November 2nd, 2013 - Panajachel, Guatemala. That Saturday, I visited the home of one of the students enrolled in the Starfish program. We made lunch with the family and talked to them about how things were going for them. The family was in the process of building another house behind their current house. The new house had concrete floors, cinder block walls, and electricity, but the doors and windows hadn't been installed yet. The father of the home told us that he was building the house with his daughter, who is in her sophomore year of high school. He works in the fields six days a week, and on Sundays, they build. It is a very rare sight in Guatemala to see a girl doing manual labor alongside her father, as opposed to staying at home and cooking for him when he returns from work. This was a testament to how much he believed in his daughter, in her capabilities, and how little of a difference he saw in boys and girls - both are capable of the same achievements.

After leaving the home, my Starfish colleague told me that this father was an alcoholic. The reason that his daughter was enrolled in Starfish was because he spent most of the family's earnings on alcohol. At one point he pulled her out of the program to have her sell tortillas in Antigua, but the Starfish staff fought to get her back. Today, construction on the house is on pause until they can get another loan to keep building.

Ten years ago, sitting on top of my Harry Potter castle playing with Legos in my basement, I was queen of my own universe - maybe I couldn't control everything, but I sure as hell could control whether Ron Weasley went down to the Chamber of Secrets and won his battle against the serpent. Backpacking through the Rocky Mountains, carrying on my back everything I needed to keep me alive (even just for the next 24 hours), I knew that I could do anything. And building a bicycle from scratch, I learned to trust my own two hands.

Which brings me to the Harry Potter castle complex. There have been numerous times throughout my life when I felt completely helpless, even lacking control over Lego Ron Weasley. But not in that castle. There have been many times when I knew with 100% certainty that I couldn't do something, or that my own two hands weren't good enough. But not when I was with my dad. Because the two of us could move mountains.

I've been thinking a lot about the Starfish family that I met this weekend, mostly about how to make sense of what I learned. And I haven't come to many firm conclusions. But I do know that there are few things stronger that a father's love, and that father's love for his daughter was strong enough to build a house, a Harry Potter castle of their own, to support his entire family. It was strong enough to get her enrolled in Starfish and support her throughout secondary school and beyond, even when his neighbors criticized him for wasting money on his daughter's education. And maybe there were times outside of that Harry Potter castle that their steps were shaky, and their paths a bit more uncertain. But together, building that house, their own castle, it is very possible that they, too, could move mountains.

Dad, I owe who I am to you. Thank you.

Stay tuned, mom. Yours is coming soon.