Dad

Posted by Justine | June 14, 2008 | 10 Comments

Shortly after my parents brought me home from the hospital — a tiny little baby in a light pink jumper — my father attempted his first diaper changing. My mother, as the story goes, found my father and I in the nursery, me still covered in poop, and my father turned away from me puking all over the floor. That was the first (and last) diaper my father ever changed. I think my mom decided that it was just easier to clean up the poop than to clean up both of us by making my queasy father pull his weight in the diaper changing department.

To his credit, he compensated by cooking wildly exotic food, dressing me in cute little hippie clothes, and taking more than his fair turn getting up with me in the night. I imagine my father softly dancing me back to sleep in the living room, Davy Jones or Diana Ross singing on the record player in the background (and in my mental picture, there’s a disco ball, although that’s probably just folly, eh?)

I think my father at some point must have decided that his life wasn’t about to stop just because there were a bunch of pooping children in his life now, and he took hold of us and our mother, and took us along on his crazy ride.

He once decided that we, as a family, needed to see how it felt to drive all the way around Lake Superior. It took us almost a month.

And although freeways were a mainstay of American culture by the 70’s, my father eschewed them with vigor. We drove all over the country on two lane roads, stopping at Tape Museums, exhibits of large driftwood, forty foot tall sculptures of Paul Bunyan. I’ve seen memorials to pancakes, the worlds largest antler sculpture, teacup shrines, and museums devoted to the study of fudge.

Any child in their right mind goes through their life with the assumption that everyone else on earth is just like they are, so I never once wondered if my dad was the slightest bit — well — unique. I assumed children all across America were driving to ice sculpture contests and forging through the wilderness to cut down their own Christmas tree.

Only as an adult did I realize how lucky I really had been.

As a sixteen year old, going to the Homecoming dance for the first time, I wasn’t so pleased to have a father who greeted my date standing on the deck railing in his lumberjack suspenders and wielding an enormous ax. He laughed for three weeks at the terrorized look he got out of my date. (that boy never asked me out again…it’s just as well.)

In college, just as I was realizing my childhood had indeed been rich and savory rather than traumatic and strange, I heard stories of my father skimming the ground in his helicopter chasing wolves through the fields of Northern Maine, trying to hike the 2,000 mile Appalachian trail just for kicks, writing brilliant and scathing letters to those pesky writers at the New Yorker, filling his garage with hundreds of woodworking tools so he could learn how to fix a single wobbly rocking chair.

Now as I contemplate my life with my own children, I see it more clearly.

My dad rocks.

Happy Father’s Day, dad. We’ll be needing to borrow the ax here pretty soon.

Tell me about your dad. Funny? Serious? Eccentric? Spontaneous? Crafty? Loud? Dean pan? Soft-spoken? Powerful? How has your dad shaped your adult life?

Category: Daily Special

Comments

10 Responses to “Dad”

Michelle Glauser
June 14th, 2008 @ 5:43 am

My dad is hilarious. Every time I tell him so, he says, “Looking or smelling?” He’s been working on a list of jokes to be read some day at his funeral for the last five or so years. It started out with ten but it’s grown to over 25. He’s a hard worker who never complains, even though he’s struggled with bad hips for years. He is the most regular writer since I’ve moved away from home, and he sets a good example of diligence in other ways too. I’ve only seen him angry a few times in my life and I love him with all my heart.
Dalene
June 14th, 2008 @ 7:16 am

My dad has been gone for a very long time now, but one of my favorite memories is of how he used to quote Shakespeare to me and tell me it was straight out of the Bible.
Jennie
June 14th, 2008 @ 7:46 am

My dad was a very avid sailboater. We sailed the Great Lakes for days and weeks at a time and saw all sorts of weird nooks and crannies too, Justine. (We mostly stuck to Lake Huron and the Georgian Bay). Anytime it was a Sunday he would find the nearest ward and make us all go to church. In our shorts, not having bathed in days, usually. I was always so embarrassed, but it was a great lesson in the importance of worship and dedication.
Justine
June 14th, 2008 @ 8:09 am

But Shakespeare is from the Bible,, isn’t he?

And Michelle, I want to go to your dads funeral. I love funerals like that, I’ve been to a couple of raging funerals and they were so sad and so wonderful all at once.

Jennie, maybe our dads were long lost brothers. My dad was a sailboater when we lived in the south, but when we moved to Michigan, he sold his sailboat, grumbling something about having to leave the ocean. And I have vivid memories of showing up at random wards or branches for church, grimy and smelly.
Sharlee
June 14th, 2008 @ 11:38 am

My dad died in a mining accident when I was five, so I have only a few snapshot memories of him: him holding my hand and skipping (that’s right; skipping) with me down Main Street in Roosevelt, Utah; me sitting on his lap “driving” the car; him, with a twinkle in his eye, warning me not to eat the hole of the doughnut; him coming up behind my mother while she was cooking at the stove and pinching her bottom. “Oh, Max!” she would say, and swat him away.

I didn’t miss having a dad so much while I was growing up (except when it was time for the annual Daddy-Daughter date in Mutual), but since I’ve become a parent myself I sometimes ache for him. I especially wish he were here for my children. I have a feeling he would be one terrific grandpa.

I miss you, daddy.
courtney
June 14th, 2008 @ 1:23 pm

My dad is each of those adjectives except loud. I haven’t always had the best relationship with my dad, but now, as a an adult, I feel closer to him than I ever have before.
What I love about my dad is that he has multiple pen names under which he writes political editorials to newspapers. Sometimes he even has his multiple pseudonyms argue in the comments.
Jia
June 14th, 2008 @ 4:30 pm

Oh my goodness! The image in my mind of a Dad holding the axe is just too much! I love it.
Rachelle
June 15th, 2008 @ 5:55 pm

My Dad is my best friend. He always gets what I’m thinking, trying to say, trying to accomplish.
One of my favorite memories was the Sunday he decided to take our rickety old jeep back roading all over our five acres. We were on our way home from church and he just launched himself off of the driveway and through the weeds and wildflowers up the hill to our house. My Mom was a little put out. Last year he did the same thing in his SUV on his one acre lot in very suburbun PA. My kids loved it. I thought it was funny until I realized he had parked the car in the dog run and I stepped in dog poop.
Wendy
June 16th, 2008 @ 12:23 am

My dad always threatened to greet my dates at the door with a shotgun, and a, “Do you see this shell? It’s got your name on it. If anything happens to my daughter, it will find you.”

Wisely (okay, and not altogether on purpose), I waited until I left home to get into dating.

We did not have a good relationship, but over the years many things have mended. One thing I can say is he has always made time to call me, to see how I am doing, etc. Even the years I was really mad at him, I still knew he loved me.

I get my outgoing personality traits from him. He will talk to anybody. One funny thing about him is that he thinks or acts like he thinks he is much funnier than he really is.
jendoop
June 16th, 2008 @ 5:47 pm

Early in adult life my feelings towards Dad were mostly negative. Thanks to a wise husband, that is not the case now.
I’m so grateful for the things Dad taught me that were previously elusive(I just thought everybody felt that way) Independant thought, trying new things without fear, attack a new interest with gusto (kites, lapidary arts, fly fishing…)be yourself, how to laugh at disaster. The longer I live, the more I realize the gifts he has given me. Hopefully we both live much longer.