To Dad, With Love

Some readers may have had a chance to catch some of my reflections on my dad in a previous post. (See my comments entitled Ode to Dad on May 4, 2006.) Those words pertained to his recent retirement and my reflections on the influence his work career had on my youth.

My father helped to raise my brother and me under very difficult circumstances. Divorced from my mother, he tried in all the ways he knew to be a stable presence in our lives. Often this meant that he had to navigate awkward circumstances alone. It was my life, and it's just my opinion, but I think he did a pretty good job.

Obviously, the totality of the impact my father has had on my life is not limited to those comments, or, for that matter, anything I will post today. However, there are some things for which I am grateful that were omitted from the previous post, and I would like to begin to redress that fact here.

Dad, I am thankful to you for:

• Caring enough about the grey matter in my head to repeatedly rebuff my pleas for cable television. The half a dozen episodes of National Geographic Explorer that I watched over and over and over again on VHS were more than enough "down time," and I remember them all with fondness: Sadako and the thousand paper cranes, the making of the Monterrey Bay Acquarium, the man who dared to ski down the vertical walls of snow.
• Trying your very best to always make sure that I ate a balanced meal. Vegetables dipped in Ranch dressing are still vegetables, and this is still how I eat asparagus.
• That one time, in eighth grade, when I accidentally washed and dried a wine-colored lipstick with my white, Guess jeans, and somehow (still considered by me to be miraculous), you were able to remove the dozens of polka-dotted stains from every piece of laundry in that load.
• The fact that you didn't enforce the bedtime rule when you knew I was reading by the light of a flashlight under the bed covers. I fell in love with reading while thinking I was outsmarting you.
• And speaking of reading, thanks for encouraging my love of used books by taking me to the fantastic, poorly-lit, musty-smelling books stores of downtown Portland. I still love to browse in places like those, opening the covers of the hardbacks to see the date on the inside inscriptions.
• Telling Tim Daughtery that you would hang his balls on a string if he tried anything with me.
• Teaching me to drive a manual transmission. Lord knows that little piece of knowledge has come in handy over the years. Remember the poem I wrote about our adventures on Cemetery Hill? Maybe I'll post it up here one day.
• Sharing your love of the outdoors with me: for teaching me to camp, to fish, to light a fire with just one match. Thank you for teaching me that you must always pack out the garbage you pack in. Even though we often don't agree on political policy, you are the first environmentalist I ever knew.
• Handling my first menstral cycle with such grace.
• All those thousands of miles you spent in your car, alone, picking us up or dropping us off.
• Taking care of Kit-Cat when I was gone off to Spain. Thank you for burying him and for erecting the monument. Even if it meant nothing to you, it was a big deal to me. I like to know that his bones are back there, in the banks of the Walla Walla River bed.
• Sending me Tapatio and other hot sauces while I was studing in Europe.
• Deciding to come to my wedding with Ryan. Even though that relationship dissolved, it is still important to me that you were there to experience that day with me. You looked so handsome all dressed up.
• Meatloaf. Fuzzy Bangs was right, yours is the best ever. I think of you every time I make it, and I will never change your recipe.

Happy Father's Day.

I love you.

~M