I have a finite set of memories of my father. New ones have not been created since May of ‘95. Some I have chosen to share in this blog but many will never be known by the world. It is not worthy. This is one of the many I have shared. http://thesoundoflaughter.com/cruising-with-the-top-down/
Twelve boys and a couple adults were all laying hands on a 1969 Ford Station Wagon. The exercise session was courtesy of my families 1969 Ford Station Wagon.
It’s muddy brown crust the result of heavy rainfall and a fruitless effort by the boys of Scout Troop 177 to pry it from the mire. The station wagon seemed to be perfectly content in calling the muddy road home for a few more days. I, however, was not. Well, not without my dad.
I can only speak for myself but I may have given less than 100%. In fact, I was putting more effort into looking like I was trying.
Fake grunts and tensing your muscles takes more effort than one would think.
I was 11 years old and my boy scout troop was in the middle of its annual week camping trip.
It was my first with the troop and once my dad was back to work it was the beginning of the longest time spent away from either of my parents.
“What do you say we give it one more try boys,” asked my dad.
We all managed to grunt a collective “sure why not.”
Why not, I thought. I’ll tell you why not, the thought continued. How about I’m tired of the mud. How about I don’t know some of these folks and they seem kind of sketchy. How about I am going to miss you.
That last thought would never be expressed out loud by an eleven-year-old boy among his peers. Especially when many of their fathers could not come along for the fun. I thought about that last item. I was lucky my father wanted to spend time with his son and the rest of this motley group.
We all gave one more push and I can honestly say that I gave 100 percent that time. I realized I was lucky he had spent some time mucking around in the wilderness with my friends and he was eventually going to have to go back to work.
I may have also realized the mud was not going to let go of that car until the sun came out and added to the effort.
We all released a collected sigh and gave in to the reality of the situation.
“Oh well son. I guess I’m here for one more day.”
“Oh well,” I added, my stoic face betraying my inner joy. “At least one more day.”
Fathers Day posts from the past.
The pain has interrupted another lucid and perhaps amusing thought. Time to put aside the current work in progress with a promise I will get back to it. I probably should just keep writing and while the cloud parked between my ears reminds me of some times I had in the eighties, the occasional sparks of lightning remind me it is not really a fertile planting ground for creativity.
It may be fortuitous that I find myself writing this on the cusp of Father’s day. A day that reminds me of a man that was the king of “Bucking Up.”
In the past I have strung together some decent sentences in a form that some may actually have termed prose*. In my current state of mind I will not taint any of those previous efforts. Instead I will leave you with a few thoughts that come to mind when I think of my Father.
Thoughts for today.
Buck up.
Tough As Nails.
Love.
Charles Bronson.
Sinusz. (Polish for Sonny).
Da Bears.
Sweetness.
Casey.
English Leather
Hunter Safety Instructor
Midnight Shift
Working Two Jobs
Diabetes
Taking the boys to work.
Convertible.
road flares
Scotch.
Hunting with Dad.
A Toast to Casey on Father’s Day.
Love Dan.
*Click on the Father’s Day Tag of the post to see those.
Steel repetitively cutting through white foam. Upon occasion the appearance of a red streak breaks the surface and is soon blotted by fluffy white paper. I look in the mirror and the man that I have become looks back. He looks a lot like my father at this point in his life. I am just four years short of his last year ever. I remember watching him shave. At some time he switched to electric and it wasn’t as interesting to watch. I expect that if I had mentioned that he would have switched back, despite the cuts.
My fathers life was full of joy and pain, mostly of the physical variety and knowing what I know now, some fear. He had lived most of his life with type 1 diabetes.
I do not know what he was told upon diagnosis as to any limits his life had. I do know that he lived his life as if he had none.
It wasn’t until I was older that I noticed that time was imposing physical limits. Limits that would make sense had he been 25 years older. His eyesight was going. His peripheral vision was the first to go. Laser surgery could only prolong the inevitable.
Through it all my Dad woke up every morning and lived. He woke up, injected himself and went to work. Sometimes he woke up , injected himself, went to work, came home, slept, woke up and went to his second job. My Dad worked a lot to support his family.
I remember coming home for lunch and eating in the basement so as to not wake him.
It would be just a couple hours before he went to his second job. He had four kids by the age of 28. In those days that is what you did, although I am not sure that the schedule wasn’t accelerated. Time was not an ally.
Although he worked a lot I have plenty of memories of time spent with him. My earliest memory was of cruising through the sunshine in my Dad’s red chevy convertible. My brother and I were sitting in the back seat and it started to rain.
I remember my dad laughing and saying,“Its just a sun shower, we won’t melt.”
He kept the top down and my brother and I laughed. His life was like that. It rained sometimes but he laughed, kept the top down and cruised on.
Happy Father’s Day to all the Fathers and those that love them.
Yes, there is some sadness in my heart. But I can still hear my Dad’s laughter.
“Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand.”
Mark Twain
I watched a few movies last night that I had seen before. What they were doesn’t matter. What they were about was pretty simple. Just everyday guys being good men.
I had seen both movies before but I needed to see them again. The dozen or so previous viewings did not seem enough. I should own them I thought. Close friends had told me as much. Then I realized that I did not need to own them. I had a good guy playing the role of hero in my life since 1961.
A good man, the definition of which expressed with words seems to devalue the meaning. We all have a definition that lies within our hearts. For my heart that definition was and always will be my Dad.
We see the world with glasses tinted by our parents and for the most part I see silver screen heroes trying to live up to the standards of the heroes that I have been blessed with in my life. So on this fathers day give the Dad in your life a hug or a glance towards the stars and thank him for providing those celluloid heroes with something to shoot for.*
*Yea I’m ending a sentence with a preposition. I’m giving the english teachers out there a chance to whip out their red pens. Enjoy.
It will be my eighteenth Fathers Day with out my father. I woke up feeling a bit sad. Yes, I still miss him. I always miss him. Feeling the need to express my self in a more mournful manner, I picked up my guitar and began to play some blues progressions. I usually begin too fast and slow down as the moment takes me. I was starting to reach the proper tempo where the feeling in my soul begins to resonate with the notes but before that happened I stopped and decided that I needed to look at his death with a different perspective.
I put down the guitar and thought about this. I thought about my sense of loss but more importantly my father’s sense of loss. My father was a type one diabetic almost his entire life. He was diagnosed at a time when the only self administered glucose test was a urine test. Use of the urine test is kind of like using a history book to predict today. It reflects the amount of blood sugar of the past not the present. It also does not reflect low blood sugar levels. Because of this it was very hard for diabetics to be accurate when trying to maintain normal blood sugar levels. It’s the extreme rise and fall of blood sugar in a diabetic that causes major damage to many of their organs.
My father’s body was no exception. By the time he was in his mid 50’s, the blood circulation in his legs was poor and several procedures to increase blood flow showed minimal success. It became very hard for him to walk and his vision was very poor. This was difficult for me to witness, I can’t imagine how hard it was for him to live through. He had been very active his entire life and he was now unable to take part in many of the things he loved.
I look back at the direction my dads body was headed, with blindness and amputations just around the corner, and I know that it was a blessing that he never got to that point. I have suspected this as truth for a while but I was hoping that full recognition of this would help me become more at peace with his passing.
I went back and picked up my guitar, hoping I could now play a happier tune. I strummed a few chords to the Eagles “Take It Easy” but they just didn’t hold together. I thought that my soul was not ready for such an upbeat tempo so I then tried “Teach Your Children” by Crosby , Stills and Nash. Still it fell flat. I then went back to the blues and my soul hummed in harmony with my guitar as my fingers danced along a blues progression in E.
I guess I will be a bit selfish for a while longer but the good memories I have and the knowledge that he is at peace will help me to strum a less mournful tune someday.
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