I’ve written about my father here before, most substantially when he was in the hospital for back surgery, and I spent a few days alone in his home, paying tribute to the man whose influence most significantly shaped my musical taste by spinning a set of coverfolk from the record collection I grew up with. And I’ve alluded to his company throughout our time here at Cover Lay Down, especially at concerts and festivals.
But my relationship with my father goes far deeper than the musical tastes and listening habits we share. In the nine years since I became a father myself, and he separated and later divorced from my mother, my father has become the man I go to for deep discussion, for advice, for companionship. We go to dinner as often as we are able; have gone to Spain, and Germany, to Memphis and California, just the two of us. And I cherish those weeks and evenings together, as I cherish all my favorite memories.
Though his new partner is delightful company – smart, funny, wise – I like to think that I am still his favorite travel companion, just as he is mine. And though he has always had many friends, where I tend to prefer to have many friendly acquaintances, and an exceptionally small crowd of intimates, I am proud and honored to consider him my best friend.
It wasn’t always the case. As in so many families, my father and I fought mightily for a while as we struggled to come to terms with each other throughout my adolescence and early adulthood. I take full responsibility for this: I was trying to define myself as “other” in order to become myself, and spent many years forcefully rejecting what turned out to be guidance, in the name of separation.
It took becoming a father myself to truly begin to understand the deep connections we share – the similarities of personality and outlook, of taste and tone – and to be able to build upon it. And I have a kind of evidence of that, too. Because before I was a music blogger, I kept a personal blog. And back in 2003, on my very first Father’s Day as a new father, I wrote an entry which turns out to be a harbinger of that early awakening to my life as an adult son and parent. Here it is in its entirety, along with a few songs which touch on the unique nature of fatherhood: the young man coming to terms with his past, using his own parentage to process his place in the generations.
A father’s legacy is a wondrous thing; I think I notice it more now that I am a father, too. But I don’t own Father’s Day. I still think of it as something between my father and me. So while the baby naps with her mother, I put on some of the Father’s Day CDs my father sent me this week, and spent some time thinking about the things my father and I have between us.
When I listen to music sometimes everything comes together just right and I am in the music and it is in me. Also, I can recognize almost any singer’s voice on the radio before the DJ tells us who is singing.
My father used to play this game called “do YOU have the tickets?” Usually, he was just stalling for time while he checked to make sure he had them, but once when we were going to a baseball game he didn’t have them, and we had to go back. I remember they were on his dresser, right where he left them. I do that all the time.
You can learn a lot from a guy with a six foot long closet. I like clothes, and I know how to make them look good. I know color, for example, and I know not to iron directly on silk. It’s less an issue of knowing men’s fashion, and more like knowing what looks good on you, in the context of a deep appreciation for the social settings in which an outfit is appropriate, and what message it sends. I guess most guys learn how to dress from their fathers, but what I’m saying is, when I get dressed, I feel like I’m doing it right.
My father is the perfect host. I think there’s a connection there between the way he wears his clothes and the way he wears a party, but if there is, it’s indescribable. Still, any social comfort I have comes from him.
Sometimes when one of my father’s old friends meets me for the first time, or for the first time in a very long time, they say how much I look like him when he was my age, and we sort of grin, and don’t know what else to say, because what do you say when people say that? But it feels really good anyway.
When my daughter was born, I started a list of things I wanted to do with her. Here’s the list so far:
· Take her deep sea fishing. Wake her up before it’s light with no previous warning; leave note for the spouse. Make pb&j sandwiches to eat in the car.
· Go to a Baseball game. Get there early to see batting practice. Eat too much.
· Spend the night on our backs in a field watching a meteor shower.
· Go to the airport to watch planes take off.
· Set up a camera so we can see ourselves live on TV. Do a news show; tape it and send it to grandparents.
· Teach her to sing lead. Harmonize.
· Take her to her first real concert.
· Take her to Falcon Ridge and Winterhawk.
· On her birthday, have her plan a full day. Take her anywhere she wants.
· Go to the Museum of Science in Boston. See the chicks hatch. See a live animal demonstration and a lightning show. Play with bubbles, water, blocks and other stuff. Don’t forget to bring earplugs for everyone.
· Imax movie.
· Planetarium.
· Aquarium, especially penguins and hands-on starfish.
· Beach at low tide; tide pools.
· Tour of McDonalds
· Tour of a farm.
· Go to Grandma Martha’s gravesite. Tell her about Martha.
· Show her how to track her own genealogy. Make a family tree.
· Show her that if you cut a worm in half, it turns into two worms.
· Plant a garden. Grow tomatoes, beans, and carrots. Make a salad.
· Take her to New York City. Show her ground zero. Show her how alive NYC is.
· Take the train somewhere. Get a sleeper car. Live, moving, just to show her it can be done.
· Teach her that not all who wander are lost.
· Drive South in late May; watch it go from winter to spring as we go south. On the drive back, watch it turn back into Winter.
· Make banana bread.
· Make dinner for Mommy.
· Be generous.
· Teach generosity.
It’s a great list, but I can’t take credit for most of it. With a few exceptions, it’s just a list of things my father used to do with me when I was little. Sometimes when I look at this list it’s a little intimidating to imagine myself forging anything better in my own style. Most of the time I’m just really, really grateful.
I hope my own father will keep us company on some of these outings. Yet even if he can’t make it sometimes, somehow, no matter what we do together, I know that my own father will be with us. As he is somehow always with me, watching out for me, watching over me. Thanks, Dad. I love you, too.
As an afterthought, before the music begins: I find, looking at the last section above, that we’ve covered about half of my original “to do” list, maybe more, since that long-ago draft hit the public airwaves practically unnoticed. And there are some items which we have accomplished in spirit, though not in the same way I originally intended. I have yet to take my children to Ground Zero, for example, but I think yesterday’s walk through the ravaged streets of Monson, as part of our own day of service to help our own tornado town rebuild, serves as an apt replacement to introducing my children to the concept of culture and society as comprised of people, not things.
But I digress: today is about the list, and the legacy it represents. And more generally, resurrecting the list for Father’s Day reminds me of what we all have accomplished, though it also reminds me that there is more to do, yet. And that is a wonderful thing, to be grounded in time that way: to have that time ahead of us, and behind us, and in front of us, all at once.
Whether my own father realizes it or not, the parental “to do” list is the best Father’s Day gift a father can give to a son. So if you’re a father, I encourage you to spend some time today and this week making your own list – to check in on your successes, and clarify the roadmap for the months and years ahead. And if you are a son, or daughter, I encourage you to make one, too.
Honor thy father, and love him, too. Turns out, it’s one of the most beautiful things in the universe.
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