Daddy Dearest (a Father's Day Ode to a Pennsylvania Dad)

I've talked some about my dad since I began blogging, but he's been overshadowed by my mom for a lot of reasons.  For one, he passed away of bone and lung cancer in 1992, a while before I learned about this thing called World Wide Web and certainly long before I ever heard the word "blog".  But also because Mom was the one who drove me to blog in the first place.  It was in the lonely, hard days of caring for her in her final year that I turned to this venue to have an outlet.  I just never stopped after she died.  But mostly because Dad isn't the sort of man who would enjoy being the center of a blog post.  But people - total and complete strangers - have beat me to posting information about my father on the Internet.  I was a little shocked actually at the amount of information about both my parents I could pull up from a simple Google search, so I figured the dam has already been broken, so I might has well add to it.  I have, of course, talked about him before.  It's hard not to really.  While I was much more co-dependent with my mother, there isn't much about me and my personality that isn't primarily influenced by my father.  I am my father's daughter even though we don't share a single drop of the same bloodline.

He was a complicated man.  Forged in the hard fires of the Great Depression, and had that metal tested during World War II and the Korean Conflict.  He was in his mid-40's before I came into his life.  Me, a post-war child of relative privilege who grew up watching young people rebel in the 60's and self-indulge in the 70's.  Our very diverse backgrounds made it hard for us to relate to one another.  I was too young for him to understand.  He was too old for me to get.  I wore him out at the end, I think.

I never did understand him for the entirety of his life.  Or rather, I thought I did at the time, but I've learned somewhat recently that I had him pegged completely incorrectly and unfairly.  Ironically perhaps, when I was out of work because I was caring for Mother, I read Flags of Our Fathers.  There was something about reading a peer's account of his own father and his discovery of what his father had done in the war and the emotional scars it had left him with really drove it home for me.  I remember sitting out on the back porch just sobbing at one point because it hit me full on.  So many things he did and the way he was just became crystal clear, but I realized I would never have the chance to say that to him.  I was always proud of his service, and I think he knew that, but I never really got what that cost him for the rest of his days even following him to his deathbed.  I knew it.  I didn't understand it.  There's a difference.  A lot of the "issues" I had carried all my life about how my dad was as I was growing up melted away that day.

The rest took me moving here to resolve.  For those of you reading this who are from Pennsylvania, see if any of this sounds familiar:  my father was a determined provider, even onto making himself miserable to make sure he was bringing home the bacon.

He was of firm convictions about certain things, to the point of pig headed stubbornness.  Occasionally he would enjoy a good debate, but not because there was any chance of swaying his opinion, but just because he enjoyed thinking he had bested the opposing argument.  But there were other times when debating a point was out of the question.  Firmly.  It was going to be his way or no way.

He loved sports.  With a kind of unamused passion.  Meaning, it wasn't a casual, oh-it's-just-fun-to-watch-the-game sort of a thing (unless alcohol and parties were involved - I'll get to that), but it was a rather explicit expectation that the athletes should perform well because that was their job.  He did his job to the best of his ability.  So should everyone else.

He had a robust sense of humor, but it had a sarcastic, somewhat cruel tinge to it.  Sometimes it was hard to tell when he was kidding and when he wasn't.  As an overly-sensitive child, that used to just traumatize me to an extreme.  To this day, I dread April Fool's Day.  And he liked a good time with friends and plenty of libations.  I loved their New Year's Day parties because they would let me gamble.  They would run a board on the games for some nominal amount a square and it amused all the men when this shy kid would "buy" a square or two.  I used to do pretty well with it too.  I don't remember that I ever got to keep any winnings though.

Once I moved here I would find myself watching people - men in particular - and thinking, "that's just like my dad."  Or, "that's something my dad would do."  Sometimes I was amused by that, sometimes I wasn't, but I can now fully appreciate who he was and what made him the way he was.

I think my father had an appreciation for life and wanted to live it to its fullest because he had brushed up way too closely to the alternative way too early in life, but he would make that a secondary consideration to making sure he took care of his responsibilities.

Whatever else he was or wasn't, he was my dad.  So Happy Father's Day, Daddy.  I love you more than peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.