One Life, One Father, Be Sure to Celebrate Sunday

Memory will keep him alive, and he continues to be Dad. Though he may be recalled physically by a monument in some cemetery, how often do we hear his voice, see his face smiling or scowling, or hearing once again, “You should have listened to me.”
Many of us hold dear to our long-gone fathers by vivid mental images, perhaps things they made, how we view life because of them, foods we love or hate because they did, and how we view our duty to family by what we recall them doing.
Father’s Day offers a day to celebrate all the good things that important man in our life continues to mean after all these decades.
The importance of a father’s role in child rearing cannot be overstated. He is the person from whom we received initial ideas of how men are supposed to act and react. Oh, that all were saintly men of upstanding character, but that would be unrealistic. They were, to a man, only human.
They had strong points and weaknesses. Some could work in wood, others could master figures, still others could create imaginations in our minds that set us on a course we followed through life.
Aside from life itself, my father gave to me the rudimentary tools that remain with me. He was a photo hobbyist who passed to me several amazing cameras and some used darkroom equipment.
I’m amazed, as he would be, of the advances made in that hobby he handed me. From his humble Univex Mercury half-frame 35mm camera, (it took 72 photos on a 36-exposure roll) whose lens was used to take photos then screwed into the enlarger to make prints, and a Ciro-Flex, 2-1/4 square camera that took great photos, today there are tiny digital cameras that make darkroom work a memory (thankfully).
In a bedroom drawer remain some letters he wrote when I was in the Navy. He was a faithful letter writer, penning one every day or two. Then, he would carefully send them in air mail envelopes. Sometimes he would enclose a photo of Mom or the house, snow or tomato plants, just a way of keeping me in touch with home while I was away.
At the time, I was glad to get them, but confess, sometimes it was a chore to read the mundane things from Court House. As I look back over them, I see he was really showing his love for me, and I was too stupid to realize it.
We all know how young people are, they know everything. What the “old man” says is taken with a grain of salt, if at all. Time has a way of proving the truth of what he wrote. Once in a while, I will pull them from the drawer and re-read one or two.
His last letter, written in unmatched, elegant penmanship received after he passed away, began as did they all, “Dear Buz.” He wrote how anxious he was for me to get home from patrolling off the coast of South Vietnam, and for us to go fishing one more time in the Stone Harbor backbay in our 14-foot boat that he moored at the late Harvey Charlesworth’s Scotch Bonnet Marina.
To this day, when I cross Scotch Bonnet Bridge I think of that boat and us heading to our favorite fishing holes on misty mornings when the tide was right. He had tides calculated with almost military precision.
He also had a knack for raising tomatoes, which he started from seed in March in pots on our sun porch. I never had his green thumb, nor the patience he had for weeding and watering his cherished plot in the back yard on South Main Street. What I would give for one of his tomatoes right now.
To this day, some of his quirks remain mine. I still feel a tinge of guilt on Good Friday when I eat an apple. He absolutely refused to each anything to do with apples on that solemn day. He saw to it that the lawn was meticulously mowed and sidewalk edged, so the house’s outward appearance would not “shame” us. In fact, mowing the lawn was the very last thing he did on the day he left us. I think of that each time I mow the lawn.
His admonition, given once about staying out of trouble, sticks with me to this day: “If you get yourself into trouble, you better get yourself out, because I’m not going to bail you out!”
That was one father’s way of raising up a son in the way he should go.
This Sunday, when I verbalize the wish or someone might wish me, “Happy Father’s Day,” these are some of the things that linger about one loving father.