Belated Father's Day wishes

I was late with my Mother's Day post, so I figured it was only fitting that I also be late with Father's Day.

First, though, a happy first Father's Day to the Smelmooo, whom Tucker feted with a card and a nice breakfast yesterday.

A lot of people last week were talking about how Mother's Day and Father's Day are qualitatively different, how Mother's Day is a much bigger deal, and whether that's appropriate or not. I called for equity; Minnams said no way, because women do the lion's share of child rearing. Although I agree that's long been the case, I think that the prevalence of enlightened, involved dads among this generation have switched that up a bit (I will give Minnams the "nine! months! and...labor!" point, and agree that our male co-worker's protest of "nine months of late-night ice cream runs!" doesn't quite measure up). Mother's Day is fancy brunches, corsages, ugly handmade crafts from children; Father's Day is a goofy card suggesting that dads are kind of bumbling oafs who are primarily interested in golf, beer and the TV remote, whose primary role in child rearing was, "Go ask your mother." Which to me is really sad, whether it reflects reality (which is truly sad) or not.

I've written here a lot about my mom, but not too much about my dad. My relationship with my dad is more complicated, I think; I'm not sure if it's a gender thing or a personality thing or a worldview thing -- it might be a little bit of everything -- but we're just not as easy with each other as my mom and I are. I love my dad to bits, and feel so lucky to be his daughter, but whereas my mom knows the right thing to say to me 97% of the time, Dad...doesn't. If we call home anxious about an exam or a job interview or anything stressful, Dad's response generally amounts to, "Don't worry about it! It'll be fine. You're a good person. Worrying will only make you screw up worse." Well-intentioned, poorly executed, with an effect that's the exact opposite of comforting.

My dad would give me the world, and in many ways, he has. Dad's one of six kids; they grew up poor, living in Jersey City way before it was cool to live in Jersey City, and he didn't want his own kids to have to struggle the way his family did growing up. So although we were always expected to work hard -- I started baby-sitting constantly at the age of 11 or so, and worked crappy summer jobs on top of that beginning at 16 -- we also knew that there'd always be food on the table, and family vacations, and tons of Christmas presents, and private schools and college tuition, and that we didn't have to worry about any of it.

My dad worked hard his whole life; he put himself through law school at night while working a full-time day job and raising my oldest sister. He spent 40 years at the same accounting firm, following a short-lived stint with an ethically shady boss at another firm, whom my dad told to "piss in [his] hat" and walked out. Dad is nothing if not principled, and I so admire that about him. Dad also, apparently, was a huge stud when he was younger; he even dated a Rockette before Millie made an honest man of him, but I digress.

Even though he worked his tail off, family always came first for Dad. He was home -- except occasionally during tax season -- for dinner at 6:30; he brought us souvenirs from his business trips, and passed up big promotions that would've forced him to travel even more or relocate, because he didn't want to disrupt our family life.

My parents held pretty fast to traditional gender roles (it's less the case now that Dad's retired, but some old habits still die hard), with Mom cooking, cleaning, and taking primary responsibility for the child rearing and Dad bringing home the bacon, taking out the garbage, and playing handyman around the house. I remember distinctly the meals that Dad prepared when Mom had evening commitments: undercooked pasta with pounds of butter, or half-frozen chicken pot pies. But he did his best, even though it smacks of the bumbling dad on the Father's Day cards.

One of the things I love about my dad is his unintentional hilarity. His intentional "jokes" are almost always plodding and unfunny, but when he's not trying, my dad makes me laugh and laugh. When I was a senior in college, preparing for my first real job interviews, I was anxious about how to respond to the inevitable "What's your greatest weakness?" question. Now that I've held actual jobs it's clear that I have many weaknesses and really could have potential employers take their pick, but at the time it was a struggle to identify them, because I'd been such a superstar during all of my internships, and my complete incompetence as a bank teller didn't really seem relevant to the types of jobs I was considering. So rather than saying I was a perfectionist, which just sounds too rehearsed and disingenuous, I was trying to find a less crass synonym for "anal," which seemed closer to the truth. And my dad kept insisting that I'm not anal, which of course is preposterous, and was even moreso at that stage of my life, and I couldn't understand how my dad could know so little about me, until finally Dad blurted out, "You're not an asshole! You can't say that!!" and I realized that we simply had a communication gap on our hands.

But there are many things that my dad gets just right:

-- My fancy all-girls' high school sponsored an annual father/daughter dance, which Dad and I agreed was a little snooty for our taste. So on that night, each year, he and I would just do our own thing: bowling, roller skating, dinner for two.

-- When I was learning to drive, my mom was terrified of being my passenger, but Dad would take me out anywhere, anytime, and was remarkably calm and comment-free during even the closest calls.

-- When I need it the most, he knows when to be quiet and just give me a long, tight hug.

-- He once spent an entire day schlepping all around the state to help me get the best deal on a new car.

-- He once spent an entire afternoon patiently showing me the correct way to hit a golf ball.

-- When the Smelmooo and I were looking for a house, he kept his mouth shut until we asked for financial advice, and then he gave us all the right information. And he does our taxes, to boot.

-- He (albeit grudgingly, initially) spent the night at our house looking after Tucker when he was too little to stay at the pet resort.

-- The day before I married the Smelmooo, Dad took me, my mom and my sister to breakfast at the diner; dropped our out-of-town guests' goody bags at the hotel; and wouldn't look at my wedding dress hanging in his bedroom, because he wanted to be surprised when he saw me in it the next day. And when he did, he teared up, because I'm his baby. And then he rejoiced that he was finally done with the child-rearing, officially, and could focus on spoiling his grandkids.


I'm a lot like my mom, but here's what I get from my dad:

-- the color of my eyes

-- being a total packrat, but mysteriously having a method to the madness, and being better able to find things when they're hidden among clutter than when they're out in the open

-- a very limited ability to multi-task. When we were kids, we'd always ask Dad for stuff when he was reading the paper, because we'd invariably get an "Mmmm-hmmmmm" which we could argue was permission for that raise in our allowance, or extra body piercing.

-- an impossible stubborn streak

-- an obsession with correct grammar and usage, and outraged delight in pointing out the grammatical errors in crappy local newspapers

-- a propensity for "resting my eyes" on the couch any chance I get.

On Father's Day this year, my dad took his son and one son-in-law out for a round of golf, then barbecued for the whole family at the condo where he and my mom moved last winter, after they could comfortably sell their house, knowing that I'd officially been married off and wouldn't need to return to my childhood bedroom.

I offered to grill so he could relax and not worry about cooking; he told me, "Oh, no...I'm happy to do it. Having our family here is the only Father's Day present I need. I just like having my kids and my grandkids."

And he means it. His whole life, family has been everything, and he's lived it and breathed it. He's not my mom, and he's not perfect, but that's part of why I love him, and it's part of what makes him my dad. And, more than grammar or boogie boarding or driving or anything else, it's the most important thing he's taught me.