Mike

Ball

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June 9, 2008

A Few Thoughts About Fathers Day

Father’s Day is coming up. It is one of my favorite holidays, mostly because “dad” is by far the coolest job I’ve ever had. It is also a little bit sad for me, because my own dad died when I was a sophomore in college.

My dad was ancient. After all, he had patches of gray hair at his temples, and he was not even remotely able to understand the things that were really important in my world. He was a big, strong, clever, funny guy, and I really admired him. But in my eyes he was also pretty much over-the-hill.

He was 46 years old, exactly 10 years younger than I am right now.

I think about this quite a bit, and I have to admit that it confuses me. Am I really a whole decade more over-the-hill than my dad was? There are days when I really think so, especially when I accidentally catch a good look at myself in a full-length mirror.

It’s a lot more likely, though, that what we’re really talking about is the view through the eyes of a 20-year-old who knew everything there was to know, and who fully intended to live and stay young forever.

But I think that in some ways my dad really was a lot older at 46 than I was. When I was in elementary school, I was clothes-pinning baseball cards in the spokes of my new bicycle and envying my friend who had a newer one. When he was in elementary school, he was busy surviving the Great Depression.

When I was 17, I was howling and playing my guitar in a rock band – and fighting with my dad over the length of my hair. When he was 17, he was riding in the nose of a B-17 and looking through a bomb sight.

When I was 46, my partner and I qualified to make the first of five trips as adagio doubles competitors to the Water Ski National Championships. When he was 46, the cigarettes and alcohol he’d been using pretty hard for 20 years, probably trying to take the edge off of some of his memories, or to dull the pain of some of his disappointments, took his life.

I guess I learned quite a few lessons from my dad. I quit smoking when my son was born, hoping to see him graduate from college (I made it!) and even see his wedding day (not quite yet . . .). I also decided long ago that rather than using alcohol to medicate my disappointments, I would do what I could to either change or accept them.

Now I don’t want to make it seem that my dad only showed me things that I should avoid. Among many other lessons, he taught me that I could wield language and humor as a powerful sword, that no matter now nasty or angry someone is, he can’t hit you – at least not very hard – if he’s laughing.

He taught me that a great big, tough old WWII veteran and ex-football player could really love a scrawny little kid.

So when Father’s Day comes around, I try not to waste time feeling bad that I don’t have anyone for whom I can buy a clever Hallmark card and a cordless drill. As sad as it is that my dad never got to meet his daughters-in-law or snuggle his grandchildren, he came out ahead of a lot of the other young men who served in the war, who never made it home to snuggle their own children.

Instead I just remind myself that for all my mistakes, I always tried to be the best dad that I knew how to be. And I take a few minutes to remember what it was like to have that gentle giant lift me up onto his shoulders, or the way he laughed at the first joke that I ever put down on paper or even the way he always smelled like Camels and Aqua Velva.

And how lucky I am to have those memories.

Copyright © 2008, Michael Ball. Distributed exclusively by North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.