Favorite child?

Whenever our family congregates, my siblings and I engage in, what I imagine to be a fairly common but in our case, semi-flippant debate. Assuming hindsight is 20/20, we turn the finger of accusation at one another with an impish pleasure at teasing our parents about the clear inequality in disbursement of attention toward their five children.
Being the youngest of five in a family with vast age gaps between the children, my status as the baby lends itself to frequent discussions over the ease with which I grew from toddler to adulthood. My brother and sisters remind me that by the time I reached the adolescent years, our parents had been worn down by the shenanigans of my way-paving forerunners. Ceding their point, I counter with the argument that being left to one’s own devices by definition means being left alone. While my mother regularly expressed an interest in my life, my father’s participation tended to be limited to occasionally sarcastic remarks or uttering the phrase “You are grounded.” In between punishments I was routinely an island unto myself.
During these friendly debates someone in my family inevitably recalls the deep affection showered upon me by my father as a young child. This is a point I dare not argue. I vividly remember the hours I spent with my linebacker of a father during my formative years. He carried me everywhere, like a football, and took a personal interest in my youthful projects. I particularly recall creating my own little publishing business in which I would gather numerous crisp white sheets of paper, fold them into booklet form, staple them, and add cover designs of my own invention. My father would happily exchange a nickel, perhaps even a quarter, for my handiwork, despite the poor substantive quality of the product. Most often the pages inside my products were blank.
As I grew, we seemed to grow apart. Affection, warped by emotional distance, synthesized into discomfort and then resentment. I stopped listening to what he was saying, because of the probability of an ensuing argument. Lacking any athletic skill, I sought to connect with him through our mutual love of music by joining the school band as well as the school choir. The bi-annual concerts evolved into another source of alienation. Each performance my eyes devoured the audience to determine if this was the concert he would decide to attend. The only school function dad attended in my behalf was high school graduation.
The apex of alienation occurred when, after a year –and- a -half of college, I dropped out and returned home. Unspoken disappointment seeped into all of our conversations. I was his only college drop- out. The four other Bailey children had graduated college and started families, endowing him with the greatest possible joy through grandchildren. I, the youngest, was working as a retail manager.
Retail management defined my life for almost ten years. Respect for my dedication to hard work became a connection between dad and me, but his regret at my unfinished attempt at higher education and full adult status lingered. While we were comfortable enough to enjoy watching a good game on television, I felt a vacuum of deprecation preventing a genuine breakthrough. Then my life changed.
In late winter of this year I was laid-off from a promising new job. What would my father think? How could I tell him about yet another failure? Fear of his reaction led me to a period of profound reflection on what my future held. After more than a decade away from the academic environment, I decided to take the leap and restore my father’s pride in his youngest daughter by finishing college.
Recently, dad and I talked about my decision and he gave me more than those nickels and quarters from childhood ever could when he said, “I always knew you were my smartest kid.” Maybe my siblings are right after all.