Father's Day

Here's what I knew about my father on Father's Day, 1951.

I knew my father taught me how to catch a baseball by playing nightly games of catch with me in front of our house in the stifling evening heat of Kansas City. And he taught me how to catch huge, shiny, Black Crappies while fishing the Lake of the Ozarks in central Missouri. I knew he passed along to me his love of reading simply by my observing him read every night before he went to bed, and whenever he traveled on business he returned with a gift for me, usually another Hardy Boy's mystery, always something to read. I knew he played the piano by ear and he designed and built his own cameras and he was a former city champion amateur golfer who at one time contemplated turning professional and later I realized that I took these talents for granted without any sense of awe or appreciation.

I knew my father cried. Once he mashed my pet Easter duck with the family Ford, and as he apologized, much to my embarrassment, he began to weep. I wished he would stop because fathers aren't supposed to cry, I mistakenly thought.

As a teenager with a bit of a smug attitude, I knew some things about my father that both surprised and bothered me. My father cursed loudly whenever he accidentally hit his fingers with his hammer, and some of the words he used I was just beginning to use around my friends but that was okay for me but not for him, I thought. I knew he chain smoked Chesterfields and his fingers were yellow stained and ugly, but I believed the habit to be manly and began to mimic that practice as I had his nightly reading.

I knew he handled the silence of my mother's periodic, household-numbing depression by withdrawing to his workbench in the basement until the clouds had passed and the family could exhale.

I knew my mother and father had serious disagreements about our religion (Catholic) and his (none). I never witnessed directly any confrontations they must have had, but I sensed their differences permeated and diminished their relationship despite their love for each other. But religious or not, I knew my father wouldn't burn in hell simply because he didn't wear the mantle of religion.

I knew my father provided a world of imagination for our family, not so much with high drama but with his lively curiosity and enthusiasm for everyday life. He kept things moving. In the 1940s, shower facilities were many times unavailable in residential bathrooms, so in the basement my father rigged a garden hose with shower head which his wife and daughters rarely used either out of modesty or dislike of the dingy surroundings. But he and I appreciated it.

I knew that after WWII my father, like many Americans, became obsessed with lawn care green and luscious, thick grass signaling perhaps the appearance of higher social status. Consequently my football/baseball field our front yard was ruled out of bounds for my friends and me until he gave up the lawn obsession after burning every blade of grass with hefty overdoses of Vigaro, the then-new miracle fertilizer.

I knew my father loved Christmas. Each year he over-decorated the interior of the house with garlands, window wreaths, and seasonal trinkets, insisting on the largest of Christmas trees and spending hours rebuilding them by boring holes and moving limbs if the tree lacked fullness or balance. Yet we could laugh about the garish scenes he had created. The family showed a sense of humor and irony whenever he began inventing his castles, and those periods of laughter were the best of times for us. His enthusiasm for novelty and variety opened our eyes.

I knew my father was a strong person and unafraid when it came to doing what was right. When I was very young he expelled my grandfather, who lived with us for a time, because of his frequent drunkenness and the subsequent frightening of my sisters and me. Furthermore, I knew my father was wise enough to not mimic the Irish drinking habits of my mother's family.

That's what I knew about my father on Father's Day, 1951. For a long time afterwards here's what I knew about myself.

I knew my father was in serious pain before he entered the hospital in 1952, but because of my self absorption I somehow forgot that he was scheduled for the routine surgery that resulted in an incompetent surgeon killing him at the age of 51.

Then I knew I'd lost someone to talk to when the city bus failed to deposit my father each evening near our street corner. I knew my friends spoke too often of their fathers. I knew no one would come to watch me play baseball. I knew no one laughed in our home anymore and that my mother had been deeply dependent, maybe too much so, on her husband. I learned I didn't know how to become man of the house as some of my relatives said I should. I knew physicians were not to be trusted. I knew I was caught up in taking life too seriously and that I couldn't really let go and laugh. I knew I was afraid and bitter because I no longer resided in a child's world where I belonged.

That was a long time ago. For many years I avoided even the mentioning of Father's Day. After all, I had no father, I reasoned. However, as time passed and it took its time the resentments became less important and finally unimportant. When the resentments dissolved, I found myself freed, able to reflect on my father without getting all tied up in the emotion that so tortured me over the years. I could finally go beyond his death, let go of it, without a crippling sense of disrespect or guilt. I could focus on how fortunate I was to know him then and now. I had learned the truth about the saying that nothing on earth consumes a man more than the passion of resentment.

To remember is to attach importance to events and people, and Father's Day is one more tool to do just that.

In 1952 my family called him Daddy.

Happy Father's Day, Daddy.