When I was a child, I was mesmerized by my friend Judy’s father. He wore a suit and tie to work, and when he came home, his hands and clothes were still spotlessly clean. He carried a brief case rather than a plastic lunchbox and I imagined it held very important papers. He was so unlike my father who wore one-piece work overalls and brought his own coffee in a stainless steel thermos that he washed every night. Judy’s father was like the fathers I saw on TV’s shows. The Leave it to Beaver dad, the Dick Van Dyke dad, the Bewitched dad, even years later, the Brady Bunch dad. I never saw my father without callouses on his hands and I still remember how rough they felt, like sandpaper. He usually came home with his work clothes dirty and grease-stained. My father was forced to drop out of school in the 7th grade after his father died unexpectedly at the age of 49 in 1936. Suddenly my father needed to help his mother support his two younger sisters (ages eight and four) during the tough Depression years. After he returned from fighting in WWll, at the age of 22, he went to trade school and became a master plumber. A job he held for the rest of his life. He worked long, physically grueling hours, in the unrelenting heat and the unrelenting cold. And yet, he never complained. Hard work was just part of his personal experience so therefore part of his expectations. His one goal, learned from his own difficulties, was to make sure all four of his children received college educations. “Get a good education,” he drilled into all of us, “It’s something no one can ever take away from you.” (Years later when my oldest daughter graduated college with a math degree, years after my father had passed, I had that exact quote inscribed on a silver jewelry box I gave her to celebrate her accomplishment.) In spite of my father’s long and strenuous work week, Sunday mornings were all his. He would get up early, long before anyone else. Allowing my schoolteacher mother the one day luxury of sleeping-in. He became the “Julia Child” of my Sunday mornings. Scrambled eggs, bacon, sliced grapefruit with a sprinkle of sugar, sometimes baked apples, and always a variety of muffins. Blueberry, cranberry, date. The best were the ones he called his “specials.” A date muffin with a dollop of raspberry jam baked in the middle. He only made a few of those, making them that much more desirable to us kids. One of my fondest childhood memories, is the sound of pans clanking away in the kitchen, and the lovely and ever-so-tempting smells wafting up to my pink-curtained bedroom on those lazy Sundays so long ago. My father also “found” candy in our ears. And my friend’s ears. I remember, back in the day when neighborhoods were still full of kids, standing in line waiting as my father checked our ears, one at a time, for a special treat. (Years later the tradition continued with his eleven grandchildren.) I’m not sure how it started or even why but it was always those hard-to find candies; candy-on-paper, those tiny liquid-filled wax bottles, licorice, and my favorite, those little colored marshmallow ice-cream cones. Those were always the biggest hit amongst us kids. Sometimes he would pretend not to find anything in one ear and then spin the child around to look in the other one. I can still hear my friend’s giggling as my father pretended to reach in and pull out something delicious. But by far my favorite memory of my father was our bedtime ritual. This man who spent a lifetime being embarrassed by his lack of a formal education brilliantly weaved the most incredible nighttime stories for my brother and me. Suspense-filled and action-packed, they were supposedly based on his growing up years on the west-side of Manchester. Long before George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, he captivated us with his ongoing, quick-paced, never dull tales of “Poochie, King of the Kids,” “Sardina, Queen of the Girls,” “Ella-Propella” and my favorite, “Archie Kumayahfarlopewich.” All their adventures surrounded a corner store owned by “Mrs. Murphy” or were centered near a bobbin factory located by the Merrimack River. I never knew how much was based on truth, but it never seemed to matter. My brother and I would lie in my brother’s double bed, eyes open wide while my father, lying in the middle of us, entranced us with his latest chapter. Sometimes being in that horizontal position was just too comfortable for my father after his long, tiring workday and he would suddenly start snoring in the middle of a sentence. My brother and I would gently (okay, maybe not so gently) nudge him and say, “Dad!! Wake up! What happened next!” And, without missing a beat, he would just continue on as if nothing happened. Bedtimes were magical because of his incredible gift of story-telling and I hope over the years I thanked him enough for that. Tomorrow is Father’s Day. My father has been gone for over sixteen years now. And I have learned during that time that it is true, it wasn’t the big moments I remember most, but the accumulation of all the little ones. So Happy Father’s Day to all you dads out there who have truly stepped up to the plate, with nothing more (and nothing less) than the gift of time and the gift of yourself. In the end, those are the best gifts of all……
Posted on: Sat, 14 Jun 2014 11:37:53 +0000
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