Reflections on Fathers day

So, Father's day has come and gone, and I'm strangely reflective about the holiday.

My Dad will be 75 this year, which is a great milestone for anyone, but especially someone who's survived mini-strokes and triple bypass surgery.  If I were to be honest, he's been the yardstick that I've measured myself to ever since I can remember.  He's accomplished so many things in his life, and yet he still goes and goes - willing and able to drop whatever he's involved in to help out either one of his kids with whatever home improvement / repair project that we've gotten into.

He will never brag on himself, never list any of his accomplishments, and I suppose that's because he's sure about who he is, and doesn't need to prove himself to anyone else.  But he is the second oldest of eight kids, and when he wasn't at school he worked on his dad's farm in East Texas which is where he learned how to fix/build/repair pretty much anything.  After he graduated from high school, he went on to college and finished a double major in physics and chemistry, with a minor in calculus in three years.  He then went onto grad school where he skipped over the whole Masters degree and went straight for the Doctorate.  Not sure when he found time to meet Mom, but he did - and they were married while he was getting that Doctorate.

According to Mom, he got an offer with NASA, but didn't want to move to Florida.  "Tired of hot weather, and definitely not dealing with hot and humid weather."  So, he took a job in mid-Tennessee as his first major move after his degree.  A few years later, he then moved to North Carolina, taking a job in the tobacco industry as a Research Chemist.  In his spare time, he bought land up in the foothills, and proceeded to build his own house because he was tired of living in the city.  Since at that time I was old enough to swing a hammer, that was our weekend project for about a year, so I had plenty of on the job training for every element of construction.  Once the house and garage was built, he built on a workshop on the back of the garage, and anytime a piece of furniture was needed - we'd get the lumber and head out and build it ourselves.  Now it wasn't quite as professionally finished and elegant as what could be purchased from the store, but it was built to survive kids, grandkids, and potential great-grandkids.

I can remember springs and summer working in the garden, tilling, hoeing, getting everything planted so that in the Summer and Fall we'd have fresh veggies, and fall and winter going into the woods to get firewood so that the wood stove would always be ready in case of power outage.  No matter what project needed to get done, he was always willing to step up and get involved - and if there was any grumbling - it wasn't that he had to do it, but that it wasn't getting done to his standards.  He went to concerts where it sounded more like the slow death of various small animals instead of music, dance recitals, football games, school plays, Arts Council productions, dropped kids off at summer camps -- all activities that Dad was there for, no matter what.

I was finishing my second year of Grad school when I got the call that he had been having mini-strokes, and would need to have surgery to remove a blockage in the main artery that feeds the brain.  He'd be down for a few weeks, and Mom needed help around the house.  I said fine, I can come back later and finish up - since the only thing left was my actual Thesis.  This man decided that I needed help moving back, so he drove the van 9 hours to where I was in school, and proceeded to help me pack everything up into the moving van, and then followed me back home to make sure everything went ok.  This, in the interest of full disclosure, was while he was on blood thinners in preparation for the surgery which was the next week.  This was also in January, and that particular weekend was the 3rd coldest on record in that town -- negative 30 before wind chill, negative 65 with wind chill.  We got back, unpacked everything - I moved back into my old room, and was there during the recovery process.  I started working and going for another Bachelor's degree, since I couldn't immediately go back up North immediately to work with my thesis committee, and at that time, I would have had to pay for an entire semester just to take the one credit hour for thesis work.  While I was at school locally - I found she who would eventually become my wife, and Dad supported my decision the way he normally did -- "It's your decision, and it's not my place to judge."

Fast forward ten years, and the first grandchild was born, and Dad became Granddad with all the pomp and circumstance that a granddaughter can create.  Two years after that, he became Granddad again, and his grandchildren think that he is the greatest thing.  But he didn't have the energy he once did to play with them, got tired very quickly.  Mom finally convinced him (and we won't discuss how much arm twisting it took from both my Wife and my Mom to get that to happen) to go get checked out, and he had three blockages in his heart.  Now this is a man that walked 3-5 miles every day, and was not opposed to any type of heavy work even well into his late 60's.  But of course the phrase "triple bypass surgery" brings out the reality that this is a serious condition, and could potentially be a life ending condition.  Fortunately, he had someone in his local Orchid society that had been through an open heart surgery before, and at one of the meetings, that man took Dad aside and talked with him for over an hour explaining what was going to happen, how it was going to feel, what recovery would be like, tips to make it easier, etc.... and I believe really took some of the stress off of Dad's mind.  Not, mind you, that he would have let anyone know what level of concern he had over the upcoming surgery.

On the day of the surgery, they let me know, kind of as an afterthought, that he'd need some larger button down shirts to wear in the hospital, preferably two sizes larger than what he'd normally wear.  He'd be on such blood thinners that he'd get cold very easily, and due to the surgery, he wouldn't be able to put his arms over his head in order to slip on a sweatshirt.  This was the first time I've ever been glad that I'm physically two sizes larger than he is.  All I wear are button down shirts, and many of them are wool based since that's the only thing I need to stay warm in North Carolina winters these days.  The first one I packed was a bright red wool cashmere shirt, and that's the one I really wanted him to wear first.

My reasoning was very simple -- my Dad shows that he cares by doing.  He has been a rock against the storms of life all of my life, and my safety net when I got into problems.  In my mind, it doesn't matter how many times Superman got knocked around - he was invincible, he always won in the end, and that red cape he wore symbolized his past, his present, and his future - who he really was.  I knew that my Dad, wearing my red shirt, would know deep down that he is my Superman - and that no matter what happened, or how long the recovery - as long as he had that red cape that everything was going to be fine.

Over a year after the surgery, and he's back to full strength and health.  I watch him with my kids, and I hope to one day be half the man he is.   He may never read this, in fact probably not unless Mom stumbles across it and shows it to him.  But he's my Dad, I'll not have a better one, nor will my kids have a better Granddad. Here's to another 25 years of Father's Days with him.

Happy Fathers Day to all.