Father’s Day memories are most poignant when specific. I love it when every year my research turns up new narratives on dads and kids. The Washington Post Style Plus section in 1993 captured and subsequently published some readers’ reminisces about their dads. Here’s a few:
Dad never knew quite what to say to us kids — particularly the girls. The one language we could share was baseball. Long silences, extended car rides unnerved him. So Dad filled those times with situation drills: Runners on first and third, one out, ball hit up the middle — where’s the throw? Dad’s ultimate compliment: I didn’t throw like a girl. His only regret: I never quite made it as a switch hitter.
In my 46 years, my dad has never said anything to hurt me, and I can only remember hurting him once. I was 18 years old and he was driving me from one government agency to the next looking for work as a summer typist, all to no avail. After one particularly frustrating interview I turned to him and complained, “I’d have a job by now if you knew somebody like all my friends’ fathers.” He never said a word but the look of pain in his eyes has stayed with me all these years.
“Brake!” My dad yelled. I panicked and pressed the gas pedal instead. The car hit the brick side of a building. I had just gotten my learner’s permit and had misjudged the space needed to make a U-turn in the parking lot. Dad calmly asked me if I was okay, then told me to put the gear in park and turn off the car. I was almost in tears, but Dad never yelled or got angry at me. Fortunately, there was no major damage to the car, but I was sure that I would never be allowed to drive again. That evening Dad held out the car keys. “Want to go for a drive?” he asked. We practiced a lot of U-turns that night. But more importantly, my dad taught me that his love is unconditional, and that no matter what mistakes I make, he will always give me another chance.
On April 1, 1943, my father stood on the step of my bedroom in our Nebraska farm house. “Jacque Lee,” he said, “there is a fly on your nose.” I quickly rubbed across my face and he laughed, “April Fool. It’s a joke.” I think of that scene every year because about a month later. … Daddy was killed by lightning on his tractor. I was 4 years old, and I remember only a few precious moments with Daddy, but I have never forgotten his happy, wonderful, loving smile and how much fun it was to have him with us.
My father loves to garden. I was always amazed by his skill of rejuvenating an otherwise dead plant. In the 18 years that we lived in that house, its interior and surrounding landscape must have been inhabited by some 2,000 species of plant life. Each specimen specifically chosen through his patented, scientific method: “What’s on sale at Hechinger’s?” All of this foliage required high maintenance and constant care. That’s where I came in.
“My favorite son’ll take care of it,” he’d say to my mother. I’d help him occasionally, and no matter how little I did, he’d always give me ample credit.
“Why do you work so hard in the yard?” I asked him once.
“Good practice for the real world,” he said, thrusting a post-hole digger into the earth. We put in a wood-post fence that day.
Now, after two years of struggling to finally move into the career I have a $100,000-degree for, I realize that my dad was right: You need a shovel to clear your way through life.
My favorite is what my father says to me each time he hangs up the phone, “I love you, Tina,” even said when I was too angry to say it back after his divorce.
Along with digging up new narratives, my most cherished Father’s Day ritual is watching movies, TV series, or plays about Fathers. I asked some of my buddies for their favorites. Here’s a few responses:
Bob Saget in Full House
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm when he wants to sell his daughter into slavery to Mike Pence (!)
Last Man Standing
Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird
Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade (Best line: when Indiana Jones’s dad tells him, “You left home just when you got interesting.”)
Yentle and The Lion King – both utilize dads as their North Star
Sanford And Son – When I was growing up, all of my friends fathers were professionals and wore suits and ties to work. But my dad, who was in the construction business, always came home with muddy shoes and spotted pants with concrete and drove a Ford bronco with mud on the tires. So I could not really relate to Father Kkows Best and Leave it to Beaver, but I could really kind of relate to Sanford and Son because they were people who got their hands dirty.
And my favorite performance about dads?
700 Sundays – the one-man, laugh and cry retrospective, by Billy Crystal. Nostalgic. Deeply personal. The title derives from the amount of Sundays Billy had with his dad before his dad died abruptly from a heart attack at age 54, when Billy was 15. The attack came just hours after an argument with Billy.
Unlike Billy Crystal, I was fortunate to have almost 3400 Sundays with my Dad.
Like Billy Crystal, it still wasn’t enough.
Happy Father’s Day and Keep Preserving Your Bloom,
Iris Ruth Pastor
