On Father's Day

My dad was a quiet, tall man. A mathematician. A scientist. Hugs and "I love you" were not part of his parenting vocabulary. He did the best he could with the tools his parents gave him. Took me a very long time to figure that out.

The family story is that, after dad's graduation from college, I followed him around like a lost puppy once Mom and I caught up with him when he moved to Texas before us. What I do remember is "helping" Dad with his experiments as he tried to create a way to scavenge clean water from the air around us. The apparatus was hooked to a vacuum cleaner and never quite worked as he hoped, but I was a part of it. I never learned until after he died that he had several patents. NASA owns them, but they are in his name.

Dad was an atrocious punster. He'd get a twinkle in his eye when he caught someone using a phrase that he could turn into a real stinker. Only once in my entire life did I ever get him back. At a family Thanksgiving dinner, he let off one that absolutely reeked. I turned to my aunt and, doing a takeoff on an old Prell commercial, said "You'll just have to excuse him. He just washed his brain and can't do a thing with it." In time, I learned that the only way to hold my own with him was to staunchly remain silent, pretending I already had the answer, when he snuck up to a zinger. It frustrated the heck out of him! And I usually found out where he was going anyway, because there was generally one sucker in the room who'd have to ask Who? or What? or Why?

Our entire family roller skated competitively. Not roller derby, but like the artistic ice skating competitions. Dad was a hard taskmaster and expected us to work to improve. Yet my fondest memories are of the times he skated with me as his dance partner, and when we did the 14-Step with him doing the women's steps and me doing the men's. What fun!

I was well into adulthood before I realized that "What needs to be fixed?" and "I've noticed 'x', let me get my tool box." actually meant "I love you." When I was a child, I desperately wanted to learn to play the piano. Dad, a fine craftsman, was building a bookcase/desk/cabinet unit into the family room wall. He left a piano-sized space in it for a time when we might get a piano. Later on, when we did, it was just precisely the right size for a small upright. He almost got skunked on it, though, because most pianos at the time were about 1 inch taller than the space he'd left.

On the day that my world went to hell in a hand-basket, Dad was the one who said, "We'll be there as soon as we can. Will you be all right 'til we get there?" The time I left Houston for Austin and forgot my purse, Dad decided that they ought to drive it all the way to Austin instead of sending it via UPS. No cell phones in those days!

In the year before he died, Dad was afraid that he soon might not be able to say some of the things he wanted to. So he wrote me a letter, which I keep in my fireproof safebox. It is very precious to me.

So, on this Father's Day, I want to say, "I love you, Dad, and miss you very much." I'm pretty sure he heard that.