This is for all of us whose fathers have passed on. We think of them this weekend.
We have collective concepts of fatherhood, based on our culture. We think we know what a good father is and what a bad father is. Fathers figure heavily — as do mothers — in literature, theater, film and poetry.
These days, we might expect dad to play ball with his son(s) and dote on his daughter(s). That is interchangeable, of course.
The bond between father and son is more tenuous than between father and daughter, we are lead to suspect. We make loads of assumptions like that.
My dad caught ball with me — in a short period of time after dinner on a warm might. He was in white shirt and tie and would soon be heading back to work.
Dad left for work at late morning or early afternoon and returned at or near midnight, so it was rare to have him home at dinner. I was in school when he got up and left and asleep when he got home.
Was he lonely, working in a windowless office off the lobby of an old (and in later years, new) movie theater where he was manager?
I can see like it was yesterday, my father coming home for dinner when I was real small. I would be in the living room looking at TV and he would appear in the kitchen. I would take off at a run, barely dodge the dining room table and leap into his arms.
Dad was short, in my memory always with grayish mustache and gray hair on the sides of an otherwise bald head. (Hey, I thought that was supposed to skip a generation!)
I came to know he was the surviving son of two brothers, and that he cared for both his mother and a niece before meeting my mother and marrying, later moving from his native town of Titusville after my birth and in with my mother's family in the Pittsburgh area.
I am thinking it was quite a sacrifice, but he never said.
I see him, sitting in a wooden Adirondack chair on the backyard patio, eyes closed as he enjoyed the heat of a sunny day, a respite from hours in an air-conditioned theater. What was he thinking. He didn't tell me.
He was such a quiet man that one might wonder if I learned from him in any way.
I did.
What I learned was that our view of a father who sets broad lessons, a comprehensive teacher and a disciplinarian, is not the only example of a successful father — if the word successful even need apply.
Dad was simply and most assuredly love personified — and to me that was most important. Still is.
He was gentle with me, my mother and everyone around him. He treated all who worked with him and for him at the theater with respect, no matter what their capabilities or lack of talents.
Once I thought I was getting a brother. Not in the usual way, but because Dad brought home from the theater an usher who was having difficult times with his family (I never knew the details) but my hope was short-lived. He only stayed about a week.
Dad was a good storyteller, mostly he told us his memories.
He loved his grandchildren, and what was most amazing was to watch him sit with them, respond when a response was necessary but otherwise just watched them and smiled and occasionally laughed. They clearly made him happy.
I never saw him cry, but just one time when his mother died. Yet he would not have frowned on a man who cried. He was accepting of anything, even me when in later years some of our political views were opposed.
Today I remember standing in the kitchen on a late night, having gone to the theater with him, where I had watched a movie and he had worked.
We are putting peanut butter on saltine crackers. He sometime also used ketchup (ugh). Then we went into the living room and watched George Burns and Gracie Allen or one of the late night talk and entertainment shows like Jack Paar.
I would give a few years of my life to be able to sit quietly with him again, but as we know these things can't be achieved, at least in this lifetime.
But memories are important. They have a life of their own, and this Father's Day some of us can conjure them up and that will be a good thing. It is a Father's Day present — in both senses of the word "present."
