Dad.

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?” 

I guess this has gotten way too long for a blog post, so I’ll end this here. But every day, I miss that man. And despite his musings that Christmas morning, I think he left his four kids a legacy that will make us all better people for having him as our dad.