“Son, you’re a good person, and you’re smart as a whip. You should never be surprised that any woman likes you. She sees that you’re a good man. That is why she’s interested in you. Believe in yourself.”
Dad told me that in the first week of January 2011. I’d called to tell him that I was going to hang out with a girl from high school. As I framed it to him, “Dad, the Shana Curtis asked me to hang out with her on Saturday. I’m not really sure what to make of it, but I’m excited.”
Dad didn’t remember Shana, but that wasn’t a surprise. Shana was a senior my freshman year, and as I’ve written before, we really didn’t know each other in 1990-91, when she was finishing up and I was just starting high school.
But the old man knew the name. “Curtis … is that your old English teacher’s daughter?” It was indeed my former teacher’s daughter. Unbeknownst to me, Shelia Curtis had updated her daughter on my travels and career through the years.
If not for that, I doubt Shana would have accepted my friend request on Facebook in 2009. Eighteen months later, when I’d moved in with Dad after leaving the newspaper business, Shana and I began to exchange messages on Facebook, and I’m fairly certain she was the only one consistently reading this blog in those days.
By December of that year, Shana and I were engaging in blatant flirting on Facebook threads, enough so that there were questions from family along the vein of “So, what’s going on there?”
On Christmas Eve 2010, I spent most of the night exchanging texts with Shana. I was distracted enough that my father said, “What are you doing? Get out of your damn phone.” Truth be told, I didn’t have a lot going on in those days, so those hours of exchanging texts made my Christmas.
Within a few weeks, Shana and I had our first date. Then we had another. Then we had a third. Before long, we were hanging out whenever our schedules allowed. I knew almost immediately that we had something special, so I didn’t hesitate to invite her to an event most of my family would be attending.
So, less than a month into our relationship, Shana met my mom, brother, sister-in-law and nieces and nephews on the same day. I was nervous, but it went incredibly well. We later when out to eat, and when Shana ran to the bathroom, I finally had time to ask the old man.
“So, what do you think, Dad?”
“Son, she is a stone cold fox,” he said. “She is stunning. But beyond the looks, that is a good woman. It’s about time you picked a winner.”
At 35, I was dating the second woman my dad actually liked. It was also the first woman the old man clearly adored, and she later became my wonderful, beautiful wife.
As the years passed, Shana and Dad became close. On a couple of Christmases, they worked together on my “big” gift, mostly notably a shiny new Stihl chainsaw. I also noticed that Shana was getting the same amount of Christmas money from the old man as his sons and other daughter-in-law were. Essentially, he had two daughters in his sons’ wives.
In the spring of 2019, as my father’s health declined rapidly, my wife took several turns driving him to treatments in Kansas City. Dad talked a lot about their time together on those trips, talking about life.
“I told you you picked out a winner,” he said, “and you really did. I’m so happy she’s there to take care of my boy. It’s funny that I had to tell you that you deserved to be with her, knucklehead.”
