The one thing I remember most about my Father since my earliest childhood is he was always working. He would go to work in the morning, and upon coming home he would go to work in the garage. When he wasn’t working, he would be sitting behind a newspaper or occasionally in front of the evening news. He left most of the child rearing to my Mom, although he seemed to always be on hand when discipline was meted out.
As I got a little older, Dad remained mostly a shadowy figure who would appear at the dinner table and then disappear back into the garage. But on family vacations he would come alive. Getting to our destination was far more fun for him than actually reaching it. He would go on spontaneous detours so we could stop at a fish hatchery to see the county’s smallest eel, or a museum where everything was made out of corn kernels, an aquarium that housed a 2 headed duck, or a dinosaur exhibit with a T-Rex that spit fire. For family reunion trips (we went camping every summer with aunts/uncles/cousins) it was expected that our family would be the last to arrive, and we usually were. I really believe my Father thought he was giving us some kind of cultural education but I remember these side trips as something to be endured rather than enjoyed.
In my teens, my Dad began to integrate a little bit more into our lives. My younger brother was becoming hard to handle and I was needing some help with schoolwork that was better suited to my Father’s skills than my Mother’s. My Dad still spent most of his at-home time in the garage, so I would bring my stuff out to his workbench and pull up a chair. I remember a specific conversation we had when I was 15 years old, where I think for the first time I identified him as more than just my Dad, but as a person making his mark on the world. He had never spoken about the details of his work and I never really asked, I just knew he was an engineer. On that day I got quite an education about what he did and how it impacted our lives. I remember being impressed and proud. On this day I also caught him in a moment of reflection and emotion which I had never seen.
Dad reminisced about the day he took me to the hospital when I was 5 years old. It is one of the clearest memories I have of my childhood because it was one of the few times I had disobeyed him. He was building a swing set in the back yard and to us kids, it looked like it was finished. Dad told us not to play there until he said it was OK but as soon as he went into the garage and closed the door, I defiantly got on the swing. My brother stood to the side with fear in his eyes, pleading with me to get off. Instead, I decided to swing higher and then bail out of the seat onto the ground. Unfortunately, there was a nail where I landed and it pierced my body. In my 5 year old mind, my first thought was to try to cover all of the blood that was pouring out of me so I would not get in trouble. I sent my brother to get a roll of toilet paper, but the whole roll was soaked immediately. The next thing I remembered was being wheeled through a hallway on a stretcher with bright lights overhead and a nurse holding a mask over my face and telling me to count backward from 10. My Dad told me he had never been more scared in his life than on that day. I guess I never realized how close I had come to death, and nobody ever told me. What I remember more about that time was being stuck in bed while all the other kids played outside and having to endure the nightly cleaning and re-bandaging of the wound. What my Father remembers was the anguish of watching his oldest child suffer because he had chosen to work in the garage rather than clean up his construction project. Although he had never said it in words, this was the first time I understood that he loved me.
The years went by, I went on to have a family of my own, and Dad was still Dad. He went to work in the morning and disappeared into the garage when he got home. On occasions when we were able to have vacations with extended family, Dad would still be the last to arrive. My daughter seemed to love these jaunts with Grandpa much more than I had as a child, and has a memory bank of her own filled with quirky trips to lemon festivals, rock museums, honey tasting stations and twine winding contests. That’s how I knew he loved my daughter as well.
My Father is now retired, spending full days in his beloved garage, tinkering at his workbench. As his mind begins to slowly decline he gets frustrated when he forgets how to do some of the things he used to do. I am grateful for his good physical health and that he can continue to reside in the house he lovingly built years ago. I know there will come a day when he is no longer able to work in the garage, but that day is not here yet. Recently we were talking about the past and I asked him if there was anything he would have said or done differently with his life if he could go back. His answer: “probably fix the sprinkler heads so you wouldn’t have broken your toe.”
I love you too, Dad.