Whitney Williams: Grown-up daddy-daughter date

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Tuesday, March 7th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. Up next, meaningful moments when you least expect them.

Commentator Whitney Williams now on a short but memorable trip with her dad last Christmas.

AMBI: [WALKING IN WALMART]

WHITNEY WILLIAMS, COMMENTATOR: My dad and I don’t have a mushy-gushy relationship.

So a trip to my hometown Walmart together on Christmas Eve had my heart singing.

We needed bacon.

Now, I must pause here and say that Walmart has a special place in my heart anyway. Over the years, I’ve found it to be a familiar, welcoming friend no matter where I go in the world. A friend I know. A friend I can trust to meet my needs. friend who doesn’t care if I show up in my pajamas.

And my dad has a special place in my heart too, of course, growing more special as the years tick by. So there we were in my mom’s red Honda CR-V–I in my shacket and he in his Carhartt–heading out of small town Texas into slightly-bigger-town Texas. We found ourselves in no particular hurry, talking about nothing particularly important, and all felt right in the world.

As we drove, I took note of his rough hands on the wheel, one now missing an index finger after a board kicked back at him off of a saw blade. He’s a custom cabinet maker, has been all of my life, and a darn good one, too. As such, I’m not sure he knew what to do with a girl like me--a girl with … feelings, though I sanded my fair share of doors.

As we parked, got out of the car, and started walking toward Walmart’s entrance, I thought back on the night I almost died in that very parking lot. I’d come home from college on break and had grown used to doing what I wanted without updating my parents on my whereabouts. So that evening I’d gone galavanting around town with a boyfriend of mine. It was a typical small-town date night. We hit up iHop around ten or eleven, sat atop a stack of tires in a deserted downtown around midnight, and settled into the Walmart parking lot around 2 a.m. Just talking.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, good parents still care about their 18-year-old children and mine had expected me home at a decent hour. After failing to reach me on my silenced cell phone for several hours–oops!--they decided to drive around town to look for my white Mustang. I’ll never forget locking eyes with my dad as he and my mom rolled slowly past my car in their gray Expedition. If looks could kill, my dad murdered me violently, brought me back to life, and murdered me again for good measure.

As we walked through the automatic doors, I wondered if my dad ever thought back on that moment, and, if not, which of our moments did he think back on?

We took the long way around to the bacon, stopping by the hardware and camping section, looking for a heater that connects to a large propane tank. No luck. We decided to check Tractor Supply, too, which was fine by me. I was thankful for the extra time together.

“I really enjoyed that, Dad,” I told him, as we headed inside his house with the bacon. “What? Going to Walmart?” he scoffed. But I think deep down, he enjoyed it, too.

I’m Whitney Williams.

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