Father's Day

I really miss my dad on this day. We almost always spent Father's Day together, especially after I was an adult and living my life elsewhere. My dad and I shared a love of old automobiles, and on this day we would attend an annual show to look at beautiful cars we could only dream of owning.

Dad would invariably be wearing thin worn blue slacks and a white shirt; dress socks and an old pair of dress wingtips too beat up for work. I don't think he ever wore jeans in my life, which is odd for someone who spent as much time outside in the yard or in the garage as he did. Perhaps blue jeans reminded him of hard days as a kid back on the farm. I'll never know.

There's lots of things I'll never know about my dad; why he made the decisions he made or what secrets he would not, could not share. Bits and pieces would come out in conversations, but by and large my dad was not one to make speeches on the meaning of life. He just sweated life out.

He died in his 64th year; too young for a man of his generation, but he was as worn out as those old blue slacks he so often wore to the car shows. I have now lived 84 percent as long as he did, but I haven't lived as hard a life (though hard enough, I think) that I suppose I will live longer. I don't think I will know as much as he did, though, about the world, though if I live to be 100.

I do know that he was always unfailingly glad to see me. His face brightened and the gloom lifted every time I would greet him; even that last time as he lay on a hospital gurney with his heart ripping him apart in pain. It's an image I will always remember, and I am glad that is the image that comes to mind every time I think of him. Happy Father's Day, dad.