Messages from My Father

Dad worked a lot. He didn’t like sports that much, except for the Indy 500 race. He could throw a sidearm sinker pitch when we played catch that I could never get into my ball glove no matter how old I got. People who were acquainted with him might have called him loud, obnoxious, and the life of the party, but those of us who knew him best remember the quiet man who was content to eat while lying on the floor by himself. He once called himself a shy fat man.
Dad taught me plenty of things, even if I never mastered his sinker pitch. On any project he would slowly and meticulously unpack and inventory everything before starting to piece things together. “That way,” he would say, “you know if something is missing before you need it.” Dad was also a fan of making sure he laid things on the ground or the floor, because “nothing can fall off the floor.” When I started working he taught me about tithing. When my Mom was away, he taught me how to be a romantic. He devoted hours to coming up with thoughtful poems, scavenger hunts, and games to show Mom she was missed. Yet, he would always be one of those guys at jewelry counters just before the department store would close on Christmas Eve.
Dad loved watching westerns and musicals, which means that “Paint Your Wagon,” a movie that has Clint Eastwood as a singing cowboy, was one of his favorites. He also never outgrew children’s programming. Countless Sundays he would delay our weekly trip to church by getting caught up with Looney Toons on television. One of his favorite movies was Hook, even if he’d never admit it out loud.
Dad was a musician who once played the piano and could sing high—freakishly high. He enjoyed most kinds of music, and I used to love sharing new finds with him. Of course, like just about every other American, he always preferred music from his adolescence, making him a sucker for Elvis and the Beach Boys. It is hard to imagine that one day soon Green Day and Smashing Pumpkins will be old fogey music to my kids.
Dad was strong and patient, and it makes sense that those two things went together. No matter what life hurled at him he always had his strength, until one day he didn’t. The dying process has an ugly way of robbing people of that which defines them. But Dad’s patience never ran out. He did not mind waiting. He stuck with jobs in which he would wait in cars, waiting rooms, and lobbies. I suppose it gave him time to observe and think—and use the drinking fountain—that man could never pass up an opportunity to use a drinking fountain.
Dad was never one for heart-to-heart talks. He preferred to lead by example. When I was a young adult he bore my unwise, foolish, and downright reckless decisions, hoping, I suppose, that I would eventually turn out okay. And I did. Because of Dad I knew the weight of fatherhood—the weight of providing for others the moment you say “I do” and especially the moment someone lays a whelping baby in your arms. Because of Dad I knew my capacity to love my family would never run dry. Because of Dad I knew to take time to have fun and enjoy life with others, even if that means doing what your kids want to do instead of what you would rather do on your own. Because of Dad, I know that it matters how I slog through each day. What I spend time doing will hammer into my children what I value and what I wish for them to value too. I ended up valuing the same things that mattered to Dad. I got his message.
Calvin Trillin, reflecting on his own father’s life, once wrote, “I’ve always thought of my father as having accomplished what he set out to do, but, of course, children go through life seeing their parents in terms of themselves: he accomplished what he set out to do for Sukey [Calvin’s sister] and me. I suppose someone could add up the facts of my father’s life and come to the conclusion that he was an unfulfilled man. [. . .]. He was happy in his family but he never had the pleasure of work that truly satisfied him. He never had a crack at California. I’d like to believe, though, that he didn’t think in those terms. I’d like to believe that he thought more in terms of what Rabbi Hadas called a sense of continuity. I’ve felt his presence most intensely at those landmarks of continuity—on the day, for instance, when each of my daughters graduated from Yale. But I can often hear his voice in mine, and not just when I’m asking for a translation of ‘The left-handed lizard climbed up the eucalyptus tree and ate a persimmon.’ I hope my daughters can hear it, too.”
I often hear my father’s voice in mine as well, and not just when I tell my kids we are having barbecue barf on a bun for supper, but mostly when I lay down with them and talk about life. Dad would often listen. I’d like to think he still listens today.