DAD CAN FIX ANYTHING—EVEN A BROKEN HEART

“My dad can fix anything,” I once told my childhood friends.  We were sitting on the front porch steps in the shade of the kind of small triangular portico that went with so many houses built in the 1950’s.

One ringleted 7-year-old curled a flaxen lock around her finger.  “Well, my dad’s the best ball player!” she exclaimed.

“And my dad is the tallest,” another child asserted, his black eyes flashing a warning to anyone bold enough to challenge such a claim.

No one did.  But the boastful game had caught on, as each of us by turns proclaimed the things that set our fathers apart from lesser men.

Now, almost 25 years later, with Father’s Day fast approaching, I have reason once again to reflect upon the singularity of my own dad’s nature; he doesn’t fit the common mold.

Some things my father doesn’t do, may never do:

            ·      coach a little league baseball team 

·      wear Bermuda shorts

·      watch football games on holidays

·      differentiate between women's work and men's

·      come home from his job and put his feet up

·      smell like Old Spice

My dad doesn’t tell war stories (although he has some) or relish apple pie.  He doesn’t own a golf club, read the Wall Street Journal, or buy Florsheim shoes.  He doesn’t play the stock market.  I’ve never seen him jog.

But my dad can and does:

·      handle a canoe like a native American

·      hike the socks off men twice his size or half his age

·      ice skate backwards and walk on his hands

·      pop popcorn every night

·      work writing technical manuals for the repair of aircraft 

·      do anything to help anyone in need at any time 

He’s not too proud to change a baby’s diaper or mop a kitchen floor, and he gives coveralls the dignity of a uniform.

My dad works hard with his hands, and when he cuts, blisters, or bruises them, he doesn’t complain.  I never know when he’s hurting, but he always knows when I am.

He’s not afraid to say “I’m sorry,” or “I love you,” or Can I help?”

And when something breaks, even if it’s someone’s heart, he’s always there.

My dad can fix anything.

Love my beautiful parents!

WHICH CAME FIRST? BIRDS, BEES, OR EGGS?

The morning Michael planted a feather in a clay pot so it could "grow into a baby bird," I knew it was time to have the talk.

"Do you know what comes from chicken eggs?" I asked, ushering him into the kitchen for a peek inside a carton full of fancy, large grade AA's.

"Egg yolks," he answered with all the sobriety of a 7-year-old who likes his omelets plain.

"Yes," I tried again, "but sometimes...under the right conditions...egg yolks turn into baby chickens.

"Under what conditions?"  he said, lowering his voice and staring with some amusement at my knocking knees.

"When a mommy chicken meets a daddy chicken."

"What do you mean by meets?" the child asked.

Thinking he sounded like an interrogator for a terrorist regime, I wiped cold sweat from my brow.

"Well, the mommy chicken and the daddy chicken decide they want to become mates."

"Mates, like my two sneakers?"

"Not exactly."

"Like the pirates in Peter Pan?"

"No, not at all like that!"

"Then how?"

"Well, like a mommy and a daddy."

"Oh," he said simply.  And then, pausing to digest that bit of information, his face lit up,  "Mother,  is this conversation about the birds and the bees?"

"Why, yes!" I gasped, not just a little bit surprised.

"Good, then I guess I can go water my feather. Dad and I have already had that discussion."

"Already?  Then why all this talk about Peter Pan and pirates and shoes that come in pairs?"

"I was just testing to see if you knew."

"Just testing to see if I knew?  But what about the feather?"

"What about it?" Mike said, leering like a Jack O' Lantern.  "There's no law against a little kid exercising his imagination!"

"Guess not," I conceded; then, grasping at the chance to change the subject, asked, "By the way, how do you want your breakfast egg?"

"Hatched," he laughed and climbed onto his stool.

"Then why all this talk about Peter Pan and pirates and shoes that come in pairs?"

MOM HAD A WAY OF KNOWING WHEN TO HELP, WHEN TO LET GO

Each time my kids enter a new stage of life, I marvel at the way my mother managed the ups and downs of parenting when I was growing up.  Somehow she was able to help each of her five children step smoothly over milestones and stumbling blocks without losing her own sense of balance.

No matter what was going on in her personal life, Mom was always there to help each of us kids though our challenges.  She had an uncanny way of knowing whether we needed a helping hand or a boost from behind.  Yet, she was willing to stand back and let us go it alone when she saw that we needed the strength that comes from working things out for ourselves.

In my early years, I was more than willing to grasp hold of her warm, responsive hand.  Once in the old downtown Ogden JC Penney’s store, I let go of Mama’s hand and grabbed onto her coat.  Somehow, gazing intently into a display case, I must have let go and grabbed hold again with the other hand.  Moments later, I was terrified to discover someone else’s mother’s sleeve clutched firmly in my fingertips.

Luckily, my own mom, still standing on the other side, reached down and drew me close again.  That’s how she’s always been.  Standing by my side, allowing me to let go but always willing to let me hang on again when I needed to.

As a teenager, I let go a lot.

“When I grow up,” I said, “I’m not going to do this and that, or anything like you.”  I wanted to set my own hours, pick out my own clothes, and decide whether or not to practice violin.

Because Mom was able to draw a fine, almost invisible, line between the decisions she felt comfortable letting me make and the ones she knew she had to “help” me make, I made it through high school thinking I had done it on my own.

But when, as a freshman in college, immersed in psychology and sociology classes, I felt compelled to stand on my own two feet and tell both my parents everything I knew that they didn’t, that got me into trouble.  I’ll never forget how Mom took me aside to explain in no-nonsense terms that “book learning” and wisdom were not the same thing. There were a few things I needed to learn through experience, and experience was something she had that I didn’t.

That was all she said.  It wasn’t until years later, when the pressures of being an adult seemed almost overwhelming, that I began to understand how growing up during the Great Depression, living through World War II as a teenager, and starting out as a newlywed with a nest egg of less than $50, could have taught my mom more than I had ever learned in history books.

It also took me a long time to realize that a mom keeps on washing dishes, making beds, and doing laundry, not to mention mending clothes, bandaging skinned knees, and drying tears, even as her own tears are drying on the pillowcase.

Mama probably had six or seven major operations in the years I lived at home.  Shamefully, I don’t know the exact number, because I was never really aware of her pain.  She’d go to the hospital, leaving each of us kids a sealed letter to be opened and read “just in case” and come home pale but smiling—glad to get back to the business of taking care of us and the house.  Thank heavens our dad was more sensitive than I was to the fact that there were times when Mom needed extra help.

I didn't figure out what “just in case” meant, until I entered the hospital as an adult and looked mortality straight in the eye.  Lying on a gurney with an acute kidney infection, I knew at last what it meant to want desperately to be well for “the sake of the kids”.

I knew also that I’d been wrong about a lot of things.  At one time, I fervently believed that the ultimate goal of each generation was to rise above the last.  But now, having raised seven kids to various stages of life, including an oldest daughter who has set her wedding date, I’ve learned slowly, surely, and sometimes painfully, that success for me can be measured in only one way—how close I come to being like my Mom.

Mom holding her first great-grandchild.  How she loved babies!