Father’s day is coming up once again, and I am understandably thinking about my own father. Every time you turn on the TV, there are Father’s Day commercials. People post them online, and tell you to grab Kleenex before you watch. Inevitably, I will watch, and often end up a little (or a lot) on the misty side. The commercials all show dads doing dad things, and what usually tears me up is that I don’t remember a lot of that with my own dad. This is not to say that it did not happen, only that I don’t remember it.
My father was from a different generation than a lot of my friends parents were, and he was much older. He was 39 when I was born, but he looked and acted much older. The irony there is that he was younger than I was when my little guy was born. Anyway, it seems to me that the generation he came out of was not so…nurturing and…”touchy-feely” as a lot of men–a lot of dads–later became. I don’t remember a single instance of him talking about his feelings, or anyone else’s. It wasn’t his fault–it was just how things were.
So most of the memories I have of feeling nurtured or loved on concern my older sisters. I suppose that is often the role of women in the lives of boys. It certainly was in mine. Consequently, I wanted to spend as much time as I could with my sisters. It made sense to me then, but I have no idea how it made my dad feel that I didn’t want to be around the house much. I never had the opportunity to ask him. Not when I was old enough to understand that my behavior toward him might have been hurtful in some way. He died in 1984, when I was 16. He died before I learned to drive. He didn’t see me graduate. He didn’t usher me off to college (nobody, did, actually. I didn’t start until I was in my 20’s, and I didn’t graduate until this year).
Recently, though, I have been actively trying to remember things, and looking at a lot of pictures, and little snippets of Dad have been coming to me. Rising up in my memory like little slips of paper with things written on them.
Dad sitting in the kitchen with a BB gun, waiting to shoot a mouse.
Dad driving through Jack in the Box to get me pancakes before we went out on his sailboat.
Dad making me rubber band guns in the garage.
Dad taking me and one of my friends to see the first Jaws movie.
Dad finding me when I got lost at the swap meet once.
Dad taking a washer or dryer in his arms and wrestling it out of the back of his pickup.
Dad seeing a swear word on a rock at the bay and draping a towel over it so my mom wouldn’t have to see it.
Dad teaching me how to pull the guts out of fish.
He didn’t often–possibly ever, that I can remember–tell me he loved me, but he sure showed me an awful lot.
I remember listening to him getting ready for work and drinking coffee and talking with my mom. I would go out to the kitchen and say goodbye. We would do that whole “see you later, alligator” thing, and I loved it.
So there was a lot of good there, I just needed to go looking for it. There’s much more than the things I shared above, but I’m keeping them just for me.
I wonder what I would say to him given the opportunity?
I think I would certainly tell him that I loved him. Part of me would have wanted him to be different, but an even bigger part would have wanted me to be different. I suppose I was just being a typical adolescent and teenager, but that doesn’t excuse anything. Of course, had I known he only had a few short years left, I would have perhaps tried to do things differently. I didn’t know, and consequently I wasn’t the person I would have wanted to be.
I can’t live in the past, though when days come around like Father’s Day and Mother’s day I think to regret a few things.
What I do know is that I don’t want my own kids to wonder about me later on in their own lives, so that means I need to be a better and more significant part of their lives now. My generation is touchy-feely, and I need to get off my ass and touch and feel (in a non-creeperish sort of way, of course).
So as you might have guessed, I’m feeling pretty sentimental right now. I haven’t seen my kids or my wife in almost two weeks, and it is weighing on me something terrible. I hope the conviction I’m feeling now does not leave me, but stays burning in my heart.
I want very badly to be a good dad.
To that end, I know that some things need to happen. I need to depend more deeply on God, and not on myself and my own understanding. I need to turn to God, and trust him more (I don’t think we can ever do that enough). I need to stop thinking so much about what was lost and think about what is–thanks to His provenient Grace–yet to come. I need to think about God’s promise, given in Joel 2:25 to “repay the years the locusts have eaten.”
Absolutely no credit to myself, but I feel like things are looking up in that regard. Over the past week, all of my siblings, finally, are in touch. Yes, it is via social networking, but that is a very big something for us, and I feel that more good is to come.
There are only a few weeks left in this program, and then I will be home. And I can begin to do things like seek his truth for my life in scripture–along with my kids. They need to see that is important to me, and I need to show them.
I can’t turn back any clocks, and I don’t think I would want to if I could. What I can do is my best to be different.
Better, stronger, faster (ok, no, I’m not bionic, but I’ve always wanted to be. I liked that noise it would make when he did bionic stuff on the show–sort of a ch-ch-ch-ch kind of thing).
So there I go again. Out of place humor.
A Work in Progress 
Things make a lot more sense when you realize the reality of dad’s life. He returned from World War I, where he was a guard on a train that held prisoners because he had been shot. He became a father at the age of 21, an unskilled, uneducated man. In order to make money, he did the first thing that presented which was cement work.
The young family grew quickly. He was locked into a career that he hated, in order to put a roof over our heads and food on the table. It was unheard-of for a woman to work, so mom stayed at home.
Dad was a thinker and a brilliant man. He could read a book on how to fix anything, TV, car, etc. and be able to do it himself. He loved politics and never hesitated to give his opinion. He believed the middle class was dead and that we needed a revolution. He was ahead of the times.
He loved birds. He would watch them soar and point them out “getting a lift” off the mountain sides each time he saw them. His desire was to fly. He built his own glider and he became a pilot. He did not wish to fly plane, he wished to glide like the birds. He also loved to sail, like the birds on the water.
He was a trapped into a life of subsistence, as he had no formal education. His dreams of wondrous things remained far away and out of touch. He had heart problems, therefore his work was killing him. He was in pain all the time and he became weary, and he became angry against his life. He was sentenced to a life that just came upon him, hooking its nails into his heart and tearing him down each time he tried to get up.
Dad had potential that was never developed, as he sacrificed his dreams for all of us.
Heard a slightly different story about his service, but it’s good to hear another perspective. I do remember he had a lot of hobbies, and a lot of books. Stuff like that. I remember a great many half done things. He had a lot going on. Liked to try things….