The Letter

When I was in college, I got a letter from my dad. It wasn’t about anything in particular, but my dad was a warm, funny, clever man, so I laughed aloud as I read it. My roommate asked what was funny, so I showed her the letter.

She laughed so loudly that it drew people from the hall, so she began reading aloud.

One of my friends didn’t laugh. In fact, she seemed oddly close to tears. When my roommate was done reading, the other girl went back to her room and came back with a letter from her dad—a wealthy, well-respected attorney.

She threw the letter on my bed. “Here’s what my dad writes to me.”

It had been dictated to his secretary and sounded like a business letter. It was all about money matters.

I looked down at my letter, which was signed, simply, with my father’s nickname: Paw. That was when I first started realizing how very lucky—and how wealthy—I really was.

Happy Father’s Day!

 The real measure of your wealth is how much you'd be worth if you lost all your money. ~Anonymous

In the Silences

           

When I was growing up, I used to hear about the war my parents had lived through long before I was born. Sometimes I’d ask my dad about being a marine in WWII. He’d pause for a moment and then tell me something lighthearted. To me, those few seconds—the ones that passed as he dropped his head as if in prayer and laced his fingers together to think of something appropriate to tell a little girl—spoke the loudest. It was the shadow that crossed his face that said it all. It was the silence that was significant.

On Saturday mornings, my dad would sleep in, but my mom got up at the usual time. She left the door open because she kept stuff she let us borrow in there: scissors, tape, nail polish. Sometimes I would sneak in there to get something. I’d make a game of it so as not to awaken my dad. I would tiptoe so lightly, my bare feet seemed to avoid the floor, let alone the squeaky floorboards. I wouldn’t breathe. It didn’t mater how quiet I was—I’d look over, and one eye would be watching me.

I used to ask him how he could wake up so easily. He’d shrug and say simply, “My life once depended on it.” Again, it was the silences that spoke.

When we buried my dad, rifles shot and trumpets blew. But the look that the flag-bearer gave us was more poignant than anything I’ve ever seen in my life, before or since. Written on his face, the face of one of my father’s fellow war buddies, was every emotion humanity has ever experienced: Sorrow. Strength. Pride. Sympathy. Empathy. Love. Fear. Grief. Triumph. And more. And they were all—all of them—spoken in total silence.

Last week I attended a middle school’s Veteran’s Day celebration. After the marching and singing and pledges and speeches, there was a moment when the entire student body seemed to be rendered completely silent, all on its own. And I realized this is what it’s about. Not just the day, but life itself. We work hard so that we may know rest, struggle that we may know ease, fight that we may know peace. It’s hard won, this silence, but worth it.

Tomorrow is Veteran’s Day. If you see a vet, please thank him or her. And if not, next time you have a moment of rest, of ease, of peace—give thanks. In the silences, give thanks. For the silences.

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.  ~Thomas Jefferson

Ten Things I Learned from My Father

 1.  A real man is big on the inside. He has a booming laugh and tough, warm hands that almost make a muffled sound when they clap, like slapping oven mitts together. If he is tall and strong, it’s so he can lift you onto his shoulders to help you see better. His size and strength only emphasize his tenderness.
2.  Everyone should have a sense of humor and use it often.
3.  Encourage your child to ask questions about life, and then have the patience to answer honestly. If the question is about sex, give an honest, straightforward answer. Then shrug your shoulders and add (with wonder in your voice), “That’s the way God made it, and it works!”
4.  My father was a man’s man, a one-time boxer, a former Nebraska Cornhusker football player, an ex WWII marine. But he was also a talented artist and in many ways so much more intuitive than most of the women I knew that for most of my childhood, I thought the stereotype of creative woman/pragmatic man was a joke. I learned that the best people go against stereotypes.
5.  Lying is okay if it’s done out of genuine love. When I asked my father if he was sorry he didn’t have a son, he grimaced with mock horror and asked, “What would I want with icky boys when I have the three best daughters in the world?!” Of course I knew he was lying. But how I loved him for it.
6.  Sometimes it’s the things you don’t say that speak the loudest. When I asked him about WWII, he got that look and got way too quiet. And then he’d perk up and say, “Here’s a funny story….” He’d tell things like the time he was supposed to swab the deck and got the “bright idea” to clean the mops by tying them to a rope behind the ship, without thinking about the fact that they had metal on the handles that would set off the torpedo warnings. When I got done laughing, I was left contemplating that prologue of silence. It was the things he didn’t say about the war that made me ache.
7.  Small people put others down in order to feel bigger. Big people lift others up because they have the strength to spare. They know how to be humble. They admit they have faults and know how to laugh at themselves.
8.  Absolutely the best gift a man can give his daughter? His respect. Not for the way she looks, but for her mind and her soul. Because of course men who are confident enough to be able to love and respect strong women are the best men there are. And I don’t mean in that slightly cheesy, “I am excessively chivalrous” way that’s really an excuse to posture. I could have an intellectual conversation with my father or just be silly. He worked in local politics toward the end of his life. At his funeral, a female politician approached me and told me all the things she admired about my dad.  But the thing that struck her on the deepest level was what set him apart from all the rest. “Your father was the only man of his era I’ve ever known who genuinely knew how to treat women as his equal.” She was right. I’ve always cherished both that truth and her gift of putting it into words.
9.  The most important thing really is being there.
10.  There is a great deal to be said for having nothing left to say when it’s time to die. Sometimes you have to greet each other by your nicknames, do the “secret handshake,” and know that’s the best goodbye there is.

Miss him? Yep. Happy Father’s Day.

When all is said and done, 90% of being a dad is just showing up. ~Jay from Modern Family

Christmas Memories

Here is a charming Christmas memory to warm your heart. Every year, my grandfather would get a twinkle in his eyes. My grandfather had more than a sense of humor. He had a sense of fun. So the best stories started with the twinkle.

“Know what I’m going to do?” he’d ask. “I’m going to take a greeeat, biiig bag and sit up all night long and watch the fireplace for Santa Clause. I’ll hide behind this chair, and when old Santa comes out of that chimney…I’LL JUMP OUT AND CATCH HIM!”

At this point, my grandmother would yell at him, “Oh, Homer, stop that! You’re scaring the children!”

He wasn’t scaring me at all, though. I secretly thought it was a brilliant idea! Why had no one thought of it before?

Sad to say the only thing I worried about was whether or not it would work. What would my grandfather do with Santa once he was in the bag? Would Santa be forced to live with them, or would my grandfather let him go at some point? Wouldn’t Santa be mad? And since Santa is magical, might he have secret magical defenses against just such assaults? Plus there was also the question of whether my grandfather could take him. They were both old, yes, but my grandfather was clearly much thinner; would Santa’s extra fat slow him down or give him an advantage?

Somehow my grandfather never accomplished it. He always fell asleep waiting. This was Santa’s real magic, I decided.

So that’s my heartwarming Christmas story. At least you know where I got it.

The reason angels can fly is because they take themselves lightly. ~G.K. Chesterton

Timeless

When I was very, very small, my grandfather would hold up his watch. Hear it? He’d say. Hear the tick tick tick?

He was born on this day in 1889. And when my own son was born in 1989, I was proud to hold up that same watch that I’d wound for just that purpose.

My grandfather had several gifts to give: the wisdom to know what to pass along, the inclination to pass it, and the talent to do it well. He was a former teacher who knew that life is a lesson and a game, both, and he possessed the divine sense to give these gifts to any child who would take them. He died when I was too young yet to thank him, so I try hard to pass along what I remember and hope it is thanks enough.

Now I look at my son who is studying to be a teacher. Born 100 years after his great grandfather. Learning to be a real man in his own right, nurtured by teachers, coaches, his girlfriend’s father who is both. Hear the watch, my son?

I believe he did. He heard.

And only now do I know. That tick tick tick was the sound of immortality.

Children are the only form of immortality that we can be sure of. ~Peter Ustinov

Improper Poll: Father May I Have More Characters

Last Friday, Lisa Ricard Claro made a comment about my character who avoided marriage because her father had told her that men were evil. Where I grew up there really was a little retired schoolteacher in my neighborhood I’ll call Miss Amelia Plimpton (name has been changed, but not much). Miss Plimpton lived in a huge, historic home all by herself and had never married due to her father’s dire warnings about men.

The irony wasn’t lost on children, even.

I know about her reasoning because my mom was into taking “poor old souls” under her wing. Apparently there was a long list of things that “Father” found dangerous, but another memorable one was left-hand turns. My mother tried taking Miss Plimpton to the doctor, but driving trips had to be plotted at length and executed with enormous care in order to avoid the dreaded left-hand turns. It’s an understatement to say that when my mom returned from outings with Miss Plimpton, she looked rattled.

At times like that that, my dad brought on the Miss Plimpton impression. “Oh horrors, Father always said that toilets were dangerous because you might slip and fall in, so I use coffee cans, but only the slow roast, because Father didn’t like instant….” And my mom would do that thing where she couldn’t decide whether to laugh or scold, so she did both: “Oh hush!”

Miss Plimpton was far from the only unusual person in that neighborhood. Maybe it’s because I grew up with so many, but once I reached a certain age, I started attracting characters. And that’s okay with me.

If I got on a city bus and there were two seats left, one next to a businessman immersed in his laptop and one next to a woman wearing a garbage bag over her clothes and an aluminum foil hat, more often than not I would choose the foil-hat-lady as long as she looked harmless and I didn’t have anything pressing I needed to do during the ride. I told that to a friend once, and she clearly thought I was very strange. But what an opportunity!

Did you grow up with weird characters? And do you think they helped shape you as a writer? Which one would you sit next to on the bus?

Improper Poll: Best Dad

I will always have a soft spot for Lorne Greene because I used to watch Bonanza with my dad. I remember almost nothing about the show itself other than the fact that Adam always wore a black hat, and if any of the boys fell in love, the girl was doomed to die within an episode or two. My father used to mutter, “Uh oh—she’s a goner” whenever one of the Cartwright boys kissed a girl.

What became memorable for me was the way my father and I would greet each other for the rest of his life, no matter how old I was. “Howdy Paw,” I’d say. And he would respond, “Howdy Lil’ Podner.” He even signed his letters “Love, Paw."

In the end, those were our last words to one other. And that’s fine. Somehow those words said it all.

Who was your favorite TV dad?

The REAL Real Fathers

I was helping in a high school math teacher’s classroom when one of her troubled students stomped out, so frustrated that neither of us could reach him and so angry that I was a little afraid of what he might do. Later I passed him standing with an elderly custodian who was leaning thoughtfully on his broom. I caught a snippet of their conversation as I passed. “Remember,” the custodian was gently coaxing, “how we talked about taking deep breaths and counting when you’re angry….” And the boy, taller than his elder by at least a foot, was nodding, calm now.

I smiled. Thank heavens for father figures. At one time I thought men were the gentler gender, the nurturers. Now I realize how very lucky I was to have taken good men for granted. And they are becoming even more rare. There are women who abandon their children, certainly, but the families without fathers are everywhere, it seems—my home included.

Adults who remove themselves from their responsibility to others are not only impossible to respect, but in a sense they remove themselves from true meaning in life. In the grandest of schemes, deadbeat parents essentially render themselves nothing more than life’s chaff. The most crucial and elemental priority in parenting is loving the children enough to be there. To abandon a child of any age for purely selfish reasons is one of the most abhorrent of all evils.

Child support payments alone, even when paid on time and in the correct amount, are mere attempts to buy off responsibility. Cheap attempts. Trust me: the percentage that goes for child support—at least in Missouri—doesn’t pay for a fraction of the true costs to rear a child. And that’s only the financial costs. To say that money is all it takes to rear a child is ignorance bordering on imbecility. If that were all it took, we could lock children in a room, shove money under the door, and—voila!—the quality of the adult who emerged would depend solely on the size of the money pile.

And then we hear about the vicious: the ones who imitate kindness in order to abuse.

It’s a shame that the deadbeats and perverts seem to eclipse the genuine men, the men who are willing to help guide the young. And they do exist, of course. They are teachers, coaches, stepfathers, members of the clergy, maybe, sometimes a nice neighbor. Or a school custodian. They are fathers to children who are not their own. They are the kind of men who know that only brutes conquer and cowards control. Real men stand up and lead.

This is because real men have more than muscle: they have minds and hearts and souls as well. These are the kind of men who put a paternal arm around the shoulders of our youth because these men possess the inner strength that matters most in life and the wisdom to know how important it is to pass along. They are strong enough human beings to stand up and take responsibility for what lesser men have deserted. Their gift to young people is their gift to the world. And it is huge.

These are the true unsung heroes of life. Yes, they do save lives. And they save the quality of so many more. As long as these men exist, fatherless boys will glean a real man’s character and enjoy the self respect that comes from being one. Fatherless girls will seek respectable men and enjoy the mutuality that comes from loving one. Because of these men, how many lives are improved? These pieces of Self given conscientiously enough will never die, but grow exponentially. On this path, immortality is a given. These men are fathers in the very best sense.

On this Father’s Day, don’t forget to thank a man who gives his time to young people—a father figure. If they are not his children, thank him all the more. Thank the man who is big enough to see outside of himself. Thank him for being one of the many who strives to do a father’s job when a “real” father won’t.

I believe you have a responsibility to comport yourself in a manner that gives an example to others. As a young man, I prayed for success. Now I pray just to be worthy of it. ~Brendan Fraser

A Salute

Fortunately for me, my father did not die on a battlefield in the South Pacific when he served as a Marine in World War II. Unfortunately for me, I got a call on my 34th birthday that started, “Happy birthday, but…I’m sorry….”

For the rest of my life, my birth date would become carved into my heart as the same date that was carved into my father’s headstone.

Right around Veteran’s Day that year, as my black pumps sank into the soft lawn of the cemetery, several members of my father’s veteran’s group lined up to help honor the friend who had succumbed on another dreaded battlefield called cancer.

The guns swung into place. At the salute, they fired.

But these were not the highly polished, dead-on shots of rigorously drilled soldiers who fire as one. These were shakier, rustier shots that wavered just enough to make it clear in that split-second: it was individuals who were firing that day.

These men were not sleek young men who hadn’t yet lived. The guns had fired from arms that had lived over seventy years each, arms grown weary from age and toil and worry. These arms knew what it was to cradle the newly dead…and the newly born. These arms had fought for their country and for their lives, and so far, had won both.

Some men were bald, some were round. Some had arms that were driftwood thin. But all stood as tall as their tired backs would let them.

These men were not soldiers. They were so much more. They were soldiers, workers, sons, and brothers. They were friends, husbands, fathers, men. Real men who know that life itself is a series of battles that we win by struggling for and protecting what it is we hold dear.

Thank you all for fighting for what matters. Thank you, Daddy, for having been a father who matters…to many. To me.

I salute you. All of you. Happy Veteran’s Day.

The heart is unconquerable….~Dave Pelzer, A Child Called It