It’s my fourth Father’s Day since Dad passed away in January
2010. People say it gets easier and it really does, but it leaves a dad-sized
hole in your life that never goes away. The edges of the hole heal up a bit so
that it doesn’t ache all the time, but the hole’s still there. I reckon it
always will be.
My dad loved me and was proud of me, although he wasn’t
the kind to say it out loud too often. His wasn’t a generation that lent itself
to a great deal of touchy-feely mumbo jumbo.
But he loved his kids, and truly, would have done anything for us. He wasn’t one for long phone calls, either,
but when life was going badly, he was who I called. He just knew how to make me feel like it was
going to be OK.
Oh, but he was a worrier!
He worried so much about the darnedest things. If I
was out sick from work, he worried that I might get fired. (Dad was of the
opinion that not many things were an excuse for missing work) I used to joke that if he got a call informing
him I’d been in a car accident, his first question would be to ask if I was OK,
but his second question would be “did she go to work?” He also was deeply concerned and disappointed
that I was not, and vowed never to be, a Southern Baptist or a Republican. His steadfast convictions in matters of
religion and politics were such that we couldn’t even have a conversation about
either. It wasn’t that he got angry. It was more like he was just …. SAD that I
was so misguided.
My earliest memory of my dad is of the two of us playing
“Three Little Pigs”. Yes, you read that
correctly. We didn’t read it, we played it.
I was all 3 pigs, and he was the Big Bad Wolf. We acted out the book, over and over, he
huffed and puffed and blew the house down and I guess I just did pig
stuff.
Dad was not the disciplinarian type. Basically, he had three
trigger items as it related to us kids:
Don’t get between him and the TV; for God’s sake, don’t leave a room and
leave the light on, and do not, under any circumstances, make any noise after
he has gone to bed. But all he ever did
was yell a little bit. The only time I ever remember getting a
spanking by him, (these were the days when “spankings” usually meant belts, or
switches!) he picked up a cloth belt. I
started laughing. He tried his hardest to be stern as he flapped that wimpy
belt against my leg. I laughed
again. He made a serious frowny-face and
told me it wasn’t one bit funny, or at least I think that’s what he was saying
because he burst out laughing before he could get it all out. So then he put his hand over my mouth and
said “if your mother hears us laughing we’re BOTH in trouble – at least pretend
to cry!”
My dad was a good guy.
I could write for days about all of the good qualities he had. But some
of the funniest things I remember about dad are when he was being, well, a
grumpy old fart. He wouldn’t have really appreciated the fact that I find those
memories funny, but the fact is when Dad was being a jerk, it was like a tiny
little puppy trying to growl and act like a bad ass – all for show, and more
amusing than anything else.
Dad would get so blustery sometimes and it usually left
everyone perplexed and amused. One Christmas, we had a very large family
gathering – siblings, spouses, grandkids – more mouths than my mom had
silverware for – I think there were 19-20 of us. So, she had mixed in a few salad forks at
some places – we had the dining room table, the kitchen table, and a couple
card tables set up. As we all got our
plates fixed and settled in, and after Dad said his tradition mumbled Grace, he
sat down, stared at his fork (he’d drawn one of the salad forks) and said, “I
believe I just won’t eat if I have to eat with a little fork”. And then, he
stood up and calmly walked away to the den, where he sat down huffily to read
the paper. We all sort of just looked
at each other a moment before someone started chucking, and someone swapped out
their “big” fork for the “little” fork, and someone cajoled him into coming
back to the table.
One of my favorite holiday memories was from maybe the mid
1990’s. Both of my brothers were living
in Florida at the time, so they were staying at the parents’ house for the
holidays. For some reason my sister was also staying at their house as well. My
husband, my son and I joined the family about 11 that morning. Apparently all 3 siblings had gone out
partying the night before, and they were all still asleep when we arrived, much
to my dad’s consternation. (He wasn’t
keen on drinking OR sleeping in!) When
everyone finally woke up and came downstairs, well, they looked like people
who’d been out drinking until all hours.
I looked around at them all – bleary-eyed, dressed in clothes they’d
hastily picked up from the floor, with slept-in hair; and then at my own family
– we weren’t dressed up but we’d showered and at least put on clean
clothes. It suddenly struck me as
hilarious that I felt wildly overdressed in my jeans and clean shirt, and when
dad asked what I was laughing about, I pointed out the disparity. Without looking up from the newspaper, he
said, not amusedly, “how do you think I feel when I look at this motley group
and realize this is my legacy to the world?”
