I Remember

Hi.  This is my Dad.  My Dad is, in my not so humble and objective opinion, the greatest father in the world.  Always has been, always will be.  That’s just the way it is!

He looms large in all my memories, going back 50 years.  I remember standing out by the curb, holding his hand on a summer evening waiting for Mom to come home… from something.  I remember being sick at home, something that happened with almost clockwork timing every October and January, and Dad coming home.  I hear his voice, chatting with Mom, knowing he was kissing her hello, then his foots on the stairs coming to my room, and sitting with me.  He’d ask about how I was feeling, what I’d been doing, then he’d pull out “the board”  It was a big 2 foot by 2 foot piece of wood with a rubbery surface that we only used when I was sick.  He’d place it on my lap and we’d play cards.  Or, he’d put my homework on it, and sit with me while I did my homework.

I remember when Dad came around the corner the day I was practicing starting a fire for my Cooking Merit Badge… I’d gotten tired of the kindling not catching and so had added a little gasoline… not knowing there was a spark still lingering… He looked at my face, now red from the burst of flame, without eyelashes or eyebrows, and with significantly shorter bangs, but otherwise unharmed and asked “So, what’s up?”  “Nothing.”  “Okay, well, just be careful!” and then walking away.

I remember Dad dutifully taking me to baseball practice and games and trying to teach me how to catch and throw baseballs.  Or to football practice and football games and patiently trying to teach me how to play football.  Or the soccer.  Or the judo.  He gave up on me and sports when it came to basketball!  And I remember him giving the football coach what for for his treatment of me… even thought maybe I might just possibly have to admit that perhaps the coach was right… In fact I’ll concede the coach was right… even if he was a total asshole, who deserved being given what for by the worlds greatest Dad.

I remember Dad coming back from the lake after a day of fishing with my grandpa Yates, and then taking me fishing, or admiring the huge (maybe 4”) blue gill I’d caught from the dock.

I remember Dad ever so patiently trying to help me with Algebra when I was in high school… and his patience when I’d lose my cool because I “just didn’t get it.”

I remember him taking me to the huge parking lot at Ak-sar-ben to teach me how to drive (how many generations of Omahans learned to drive there?  Now that monstrous parking lot is a shopping mall.)  Or driving the old dirt road that 108th was back then (it’s a 4 lane today) to Papillion and forcing me to put the car in to a spin on the gravel so I could learn how to pull out of a spin when the time came.

I remember spending time with Dad at the beach in California, just walking along the rocks and watching the waves, as Dad talked to me about what it meant to be a man… by which we meant a mature, responsible human being… while Mom was at a wedding shower for a cousin.

I remember the pride with which Dad gave me my first salute on the day I was commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant in the Army.  Even more, I remember the pride and the tears in his eyes.

I remember Dad and I driving the interstate between Washington DC and Fort Eustis, VA, when he came to see me shortly after my divorce, and stopping for a piece of cherry pie and a cup of coffee.

I remember the love Dad always had for us boys.  I remember that Dad was the Rock of Gibraltar, that like most men of his generation, “The Greatest Generation”, and of his background (German/Swedish), his emotions were never anywhere near his sleeve.  But that he never hesitated to tell me he loved me.  I remember the first time I saw my father cry, as my older brother Bob pulled away from the curb in his (green, I think) Volkswagen beetle, as he set off for his new life in California.  I remember being late to school that day because it took a while for Dad to regain his composure.

I remember us boys excitedly greeting him when he came back from a trip of some nature when I could have been no more than 5, ladened with presents for us boys (I think mine on this particular trip was a model tiger – or maybe it was the tiny stuffed tiger I still have, somewhere in my boxes.

I remember the man my Dad was, the man who wouldn’t give in to our juvenile demands for stories from the war, preferring to keep those hated memories to himself, rather than glamorize the grisly horrors he witnessed.

I remember the faithful man, who never once lost his temper with my Mom, not even in her declining years as she slowly lost her battle with Alzheimer’s, who patiently staid ever by the side of “my Bonnie”, even as he began his own slide in to this damnable disease which robs one of one’s dignity and sense of worth.

I remember the man my Dad was, as I look at the man my Dad has become.  The man with Alzheimer’s who gets so frustrated trying to say something, who can’t remember what he did 30 seconds ago.  Who meekly looks at me and acquiesces to my decision making  on his behalf, and admits sheepishly that whatever I decide is fine with him.

I was going to tell about the past two weeks, but I think I’d rather just remember the man I loved, and who I could never imagine not being in my life.  And I think I shall just remember the man I remember whom I still love dearly. My Dad.