Happy Father’s Day!

My own father was my go-to parent, which is one reason that I’ve always taken the paradigm of the “mother and daughter” connection with a grain of salt. I love my mom, but she just wasn’t my go-to growing up.

My dad loved his two girls. In my eyes, he was this Great Intellectual Mind, who could sit for hours at the table after a meal arguing debating the finer points of some great question, or some inane question, or what was on that evening’s news. He always had Peter Jennings on during dinner, which drove my mother batty. He was stiff on the phone, ultra-private in the neighborhood, demonstrative with his kids, responsible to a fault, non-handy, kind, generous, and–did I mention?–intellectual.

In fact, the greatest compliment he ever gave me was when he said to me one day, “SBird, you are the most intellectual person I have ever known.” It makes me well up just to write that out. It doesn’t, by the way, mean that I am the smartest person he’s ever known. No, no, no. Just that I am a hound for ideas. I get that from him.

He took my online literature class in 2003 after he had retired, and he earned an “A,” even though he was a science wonk (thank God, since I’m not sure how one goes about giving one’s father any other grade…). He liked to talk about the congruence between physics and poetry. Aldous Huxley’s play Fences was his favorite text of the semester–a play about failed dads, to a large extent. He used to weep at the National Anthem. Sometime in the late 1970s or early 1980s, he took me to see the Baltimore Orioles hosting the Boston Red Sox because Jim Palmer was pitching to Carl Yastremski–Yaz–and Dad said I needed to see a Hall of Famer pitching to a Hall of Famer. When my parents moved into the very first house that they owned in 1972, my father came home from work every night and went out back to dig the rose bed…he would dig until well after dark with a rigged-up spotlight illuminating the hole. Apparently, the neighbors thought he was digging a grave to get rid of some body. Heh.

In 1995, I had an academic conference in San Francisco, and he did too, so we met afterwards and rented a convertible and gallivanted around the west coast for a few days together…through the wine country and down the coast on Route 1. We talked a lot. It was one of those occasions that you don’t realize is as momentous as it is until much later. We won’t be doing anything like that again.

My dad has Parkinson’s now. He has trouble moving, trouble speaking and is surrounded by therapists, doctors, in-home help, and my mother-as-primary-caregiver on a daily basis. It is difficult to carry on a conversation with him on the phone. He mumbles and can’t remember what he just said. It is a very strange thing for me to negotiate. I fail miserably most of the time at being the kind, generous, supportive, and present daughter I’d like to imagine myself being. He is, after all, why I am who I am today. Of that, I am sure.

He once defied all the glib cliches about grandchildren when we were discussing him becoming a grandparent someday, and he said, “well, that’s fine; I’ll be very happy for you, but–for me–I want to watch my own children grow up and make choices and live their lives. That’s really what I want to see.”

Here are some photos of our own Father’s Day celebration this morning at the ranch. The Bee and I got up early to make blueberry-and-lemon muffins for Papa, who surprised us mid-way through:

I had to teach her how to lick the spoon!