A Late Father's Day for my Late Father

Not to be a mutineer, but since my father passed away in 2009, I can make any day Father’s Day.  I recognize that Hallmark would prefer the middle of June, but somehow mortality and my own, um, maturity (some might say curmudgeonry) have liberated me from more than a few social conventions.

My Dad was a temperate man, of firm conviction.  Like Gandhi, he was truthful, gentle and fearless.  He worked because he felt lucky to have a job; he loved like there was no tomorrow.  Never effusive, he was a man of few words, at least around his children.  His measured presence was abiding and sure – no one ever had a doubt as to where he or she stood with my Dad.  His love for my mother seemed to have no bounds.  I came to take his thoughtfulness toward her for granted until, later in life, I realized how rare it was.  Again, not gooey-gobby, not sentimental, just a constant, steadfast expression of affection.  In Mom’s chair-bound final summer, Dad dug a flower bed in the middle of the front yard, just where she could see it from the only window through which she saw the world.  He planted it with roses and snap dragons and xenias in a palette that didn’t match, but which he knew to be her favorites.  I’m sure that to passers-by it was one ugly flower patch, but to Mom, it was a daily bouquet…a feast for her failing eyes.  And to Dad, it was one of many ways that he knew that she knew how much she meant to him. 

With dreams of becoming a high-school shop teacher when he mustered out of the Navy in 1945, Fatherhood and the need to get on with Life meant earning a living took precedence over pursuing the necessary education.  He managed two years of college before the war and worked for 40 years at ITT as an electronics technician.  Philo Farnsworth, the inventor of the modern television was his first boss.  Dad went on to build engineering prototypes of the first night-vision goggles for the military; he hand-soldered minute wires (many thinner than a human hair) that comprised circuits aboard communication satellites; he was an avid amateur radio operator from early on (I think he got his call letters while he was still in high school – W9MBK).  He didn’t dwell on dreams dashed or his war years or his Okie-Depression background.  Living in each moment, he was a durable example for class, poise, manners and self-deprecation.  I always aspire to live up to his example, as many sons do, I suppose.

Even in my bone-headed college years, when I was bent on acting the fool and dressing like a hippie-jester, Dad always had my back.  There were times when I’m sure he didn’t like me…but I never doubted that he always loved me, always had my back.  I was so out of control that he was convinced that I’d never finish college and wind up as a vagrant, a hobo, a communist.  When graduation day came and I graduated in the top third of my class, he called to tell me that I was a better man than he.  Which, of course, was B.S. 

Dad was the original, the prototype, the Taoist Uncarved Block.  I was viciously lucky to have him for 58 years, and to the end, he provided my siblings and me a stellar example of a Life Well Lived.

Even now, I’m trying to do things that would make him proud.  Again, as many sons do, I suppose.  And I think he’d be proud that I don’t care much when Father’s Day is supposed to be celebrated.

For me, it’s every day.