Father's Day

Father’s Day. Means a little more each year. You always wondered what kind of job you were doing. Now, you’re staring at a reflection of yourself. And, of course, your spouse.

I am eternally grateful that I can look at two decent, productive and happy adults. Apples don’t fall far from trees. And, I do give a lot of credit to their mother.

I know I contributed to their success, but also to their pressures. In their formative years, I was pretty visible around town and they were always asked if they were related to me. Sometimes that’s good and sometimes it isn’t.

I can relate to that and I still haven’t outlived it, even though my father died over forty years ago. My cousin reminded me of it the other day, bringing up an incident from our youth.

We grew up in a row house section of a large city. In warm weather, you were in the streets playing halfball, stoopball or whatever. In colder weather, you hung out somewhere, often at the candy store. It wasn’t for the candy.

Candy stores had pinball machines, the arena of intense competition and betting. One day, we were in Pop’s Candy Corner and I was up. I was hot and had racked up a couple bonus games. The rule was, if you had free games on the dial, it was still your turn until you burned them off. To get in line, you put your coin on the glass top.

As I worked the flippers and body english, three older boys came into the store. The ringleader walked up to the machine and stared at me. When I didn’t react, he told me I was done. Since the protocol was widely known, it didn’t seem worth arguing about it. I kept playing.

He nudged the machine into a tilt. “I said, you’re done. Now beat it or I beat you.”

I looked at him, trying to decide the right move. Pop had been watching it all and came running from behind the counter. My cousin jumped in front of him. “He’s Charlie’s kid. Charlie the war hero. He can handle it.”

Yes, I was the war hero’s kid. My father, part of an immigrant family, had attended trade school and became a printer. He enlisted when the war broke out and was sent to England. He was part of the D-Day invasion and was wounded twice fighting toward St. Lo. It wasn’t a time when they sent you home for leaking some blood. However, at St. Lo, a bomb added a third purple heart.

He was sent home with a silver star to rehab in a VA hospital for about a year. He never regained use of his right side and taught himself lithography. He was known as the neighborhood’s hero. I was known as his son. A lot of expectations went along with that. In some ways it helped and others, it was a burden. I just looked at it as part of my life and I think my kids did, too.

They made the annual call to ask if there was anything I wanted for Father’s Day. The answer is always the same. I don’t need anything, but a full day together would be great. Just to enjoy the affirmation after years of wondering what kind of job I was doing with them.

You try to teach them lessons, but it can be difficult to tell what sinks in and what bounces off. Results should be enough to tell you. But, an overt sign that they absorbed a lesson is a welcome plus.

I didn’t tell them that I had already received my present a couple weeks ago, in that vein. My son had written something on one of his web sites:

“Every morning in Africa a gazelle wakes up. It knows that it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning the lion wakes up, it knows that it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death. It doesn't matter whether you are the lion or a gazelle. When the sun comes up, you better start running.”

That’s an overt sign of the learning. And, my favorite present.