Somehow I am thinking of my father today. I want to wish him a happy father’s day one week early. My father died 9 days after I turned 16. He was 50 years old. I am now 56. Life is an amazing journey.
What was my father’s type of fathering? He was a professor of mechanical engineering. As such he supported the family while my mom stayed home w/ us. It was the 50s-60s, this was more possible in those days.
My father was an amazing man, coming from a poor white family with roots in Scotland/Ireland from who knows when. I am having trouble tracing back farther than my father’s grandfather. But they came from southern Indiana, probably southern Ohio before that. My father’s grandfather was a painter by trade, in fact died from a fall off a ladder. My father’s father worked for the Monon railroad. My father’s parents got married when his mother was 16 yrs. old. I think his father was about 20. My own parents met at the same exact ages, but waited to get married. My father was the 1st in his family to get a college degree. He lived in a small apt. on the street where my mother grew up, which is how they met. They used to take walks to the corner drugstore to pick up a Coca cola.
His style of parenting. He was with us as much as possible, always home for dinner, and spent many weekends with papers spread out all across the dining room table, grading, but he was home. He sometimes took my sister and I with him to the university on a Saturday, where we were left to freely explore his building. We did this with great delight. To us it felt much like exploring a house with many floors and hidden passageways. He was all about a sense of freedom, within limits.
Every summer we took a vacation, which usually meant a trip out west somewhere, Bryce Canyon, the Grand Canyon, Zion canyon, the Redwood forest, Yosemite. We never did the Geyser national park, I forget the name of it. Our cousins went there repeatedly to camp, but we always went somewhere else. Once to Disneyland, once to Mexico, once to Canada. My August birthday was often spent many hundreds of miles from my home. We camped and slept in a tent. Eating out was a treat.
I don’t remember my father ever raising his voice. He would get frustrated, with my mother or us, and just turn around and walk away.
As a child, he contracted some disease and ended up with one leg shorter than the other, which meant for the rest of his life he walked with a noticeable limp. He couldn’t bend over to tie both his shoes; we always tied one for him. He also found a flute on the street one day, which was in some different sort of “key” and he taught himself to play it, transcribing music to make his flute play the notes. In later life, he wrote marches for Purdue band and also performed with them.
He rarely, rarely, hardly ever raised his hand to us. I remember him smacking my backside or the top of my leg and it was like lightning hit me, it was such a big deal. One smack and we would be sent to our rooms. He was, in reality, a very lenient dad. He wanted so much to discipline us and teach us things, but he also wanted to give us many things. I think it was more important to our mom to see us dressed well, and she would take us to Sears and charge up the credit card every season, getting my sister and I new clothes for the next school year or summer.
He loved to joke and play tricks on us. One example is when it was my birthday & all I wanted was a stingray bike. I went outside and saw one in the driveway. I asked, “Is that mine?” He said, “There’s a name on it.” I went over to it and it said, “SUSIE.” That’s my sister’s name. I was so shocked, but I looked up and here was my dad bringing my new bike out of the garage, laughing. My sister only got a new stingray bicycle seat. Mine was a whole new bike.
As I got older, I realized my dad never went to church, except once or twice a year to make my mom happy. He was a true scientist. He and my older brother would have science discussions, which I was not old enough to participate in, but I knew science was his religion. He told me one time that he was agnostic. God may exist, or He may not. But he believed in the continual progression and advancement of human kind. Deep down, I know he really hoped that God was real. Yes, in his younger days he sang in the church choir and all that, but to remember the man he was and be honest about it, we must acknowledge his cynicism in later life.
He loved life to the absolute fullest, and had the utmost highest of integrity in all he did. He and my mother had a few good friends, and they would often come to our house for an evening. We would eat, play music, and have a good time. He loved us, and my mother, without question. That I know.
His death left us with an empty hole that has never, and will never, be filled. to this day, I miss him so much. And love him so much. My dear father, did you know how very much you meant to us and how we would fall apart without you?
My life changed in ways it could not have, if he had lived longer than he did. Life is something we accept and learn from. It freaks me out to know I have lived 6 years longer than he was able. My dear father is with me always, in my heart forever. I thank him for all his sacrifices.
Doctor Grandma 