In Remembrance of Fathers' Day: Dad Lessons

Yesterday, being Fathers’ Day, there were lots of social media posts about Dads. Those of us who are and were fortunate in having great Dads in our lives show a little extra appreciation when Fathers’ Day comes around. I’m no different in this sentiment; just a day late.

My Dad has been gone from us for 18 years now, and there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t remember some influence or impact that he had on my life. I remember how easily he could repair just about anything. I’m sure that oftentimes I exasperated him. I know that my propensity toward fender-benders was not always looked upon fondly.

Remembering my Dad is bittersweet, especially on a day like Fathers’ Day. I arrived in the world when he was already 33 years old which had to have disordered his orderly world. At the time, he owned a boat and had a shiny car. He also owned a television set which was unusual for those times. My arrival meant giving up on the boat and owning a practical family car. For years the rope ladder from his boat hung in our garage, a reminder of what his pre-kid days must have been like. As far as shiny new cars, my sisters and I were prone to motion sickness, so he quickly became disabused of any fanciful thoughts of a spiffy (or immaculate) automobile.

With four of us, the need for careful budgeting and money management was strong. I can still picture my Dad at the dining room table every Sunday night writing checks for household expenses. His checkbook, unlike mine, was precisely added to - and subtracted from - so that when the bank statement arrived it could be quickly balanced. Sadly, I never had the patience for checkbook precision and that lesson never was passed on to me.

Two of the most repeated lessons, or admonishments, my Dad issued were directed toward the four of us. Obviously. I imagine other kids may have had experience with the first lesson which was always addressed in question form:

“Do you think I own the electric company?”

Like lots of kids, the rhetorical nature of this question went unappreciated. Frankly I had no interest in how electricity got into the house as long as the television worked. As a corollary, some members of our family (i.e. me), somehow conflated flipping a light switch ON or OFF with a penny surcharge from said Electric Company. As a kid, this transaction never made sense to me. Did the electric company only charge a penny to turn the switch ON? Or was there a penny charged for ON and another penny for OFF? Because in that case, leaving the switch ON meant money was being saved. You see my logic here, right?

As kid consumers, we were regularly cautioned that

“money doesn’t grow on trees.”

Now I can say that throughout my adult life, I developed a strong work ethic. Perhaps the unavailability of money trees was the reason for that. However, one recent afternoon as I was browsing in our local garden center for some greenery, I discovered that money does indeed grown on trees, or at least on the achira aquatica or Money Tree plant. Price notwithstanding, I knew I needed to have that plant. Sorry Dad. Couldn’t resist that one.

It is funny what we remember of our Dads’ life lessons. I really admired and respected my Dad and wish he were still with us to share life’s little and big adventures. He would have enjoyed watching his grandchildren become adults and some of them become great dads too.

So Happy Fathers’ Day Dad. Thanks for putting up with me.

Desktops

A person’s desk top can reveal a lot. Is it compulsively organized, hopelessly chaotic or something in between?

Recently Adrien and I helped my Mom move to one floor of her condo by moving nearly everything she uses to the main floor. And that included moving a desk set that was my Dad’s. Even though my Dad passed away in 2004, my Mom kept his desk upstairs in their condominium where he had worked since they moved from their Amherst home.

The desk itself was, and is, a testament to my Dad’s engineering. The top of the desk had been an unfinished door which Dad sanded, stained and refinished to a semi-gloss. He also added a strip of quarter round to the back of the door to keep things from falling behind. Before moving the desktop, I hadn’t noticed that before, but to me, it explained my Dad in a nutshell: practical AND ingenious. The desk was supported by a bookshelf - which I suspect was also finished by my Dad as the stain matched the desktop - and a 2-drawer file. Once we removed the desktop we noticed a two-inch wide strip of old tape on the top of the file cabinet and the bookcase. Thinking it was a defect we almost removed it until we realized the tape was purposely put there to stop the desktop from sliding. Practical and ingenius.

For the last 17 years (and a bit longer as toward the end of his time on Earth things were difficult for Dad) my Mom has sat at that desk doing bills and paperwork - the normal stuff of keeping a household going financially. Although it has been Mom’s job to keep track of the finances, some of my Dad’s desk items have stayed right there on that desktop.

The blotter on the desk was my Dad’s. So when we removed it from the desktop to carry it to its new home, I was surprised and delighted to find my Dad’s penmanship on a single page of a bank statement. Written in his familiar hand was “I give up”. That made me laugh out loud.

I immediately pictured my Dad sitting at the dining room table - his pre-desk desk space - every Sunday night writing checks to pay bills and balancing his checkpoint. He always chased down every single discrepancy - and I’m guessing there weren’t many as his math skills were stellar. That was a trait that he could not convince his eldest daughter to adopt. I (probably to his horror) just concede those pennies to the bank. Somehow the image of my Dad writing “I give up” on his bank statement after spending what I can imagine was an inordinate amount of time trying to get his balance to match the bank struck me as comical.

On Father’s Day 2021, I am missing my Dad as I always do. But I am treasuring who he was and how he influenced all of us. And I am grateful to have had his practical and ingenius nature in my life.