It’s Father’s Day as I write this. I was blessed. My parents were married to each other up until Dad died a week before Christmas in 2017. We’d celebrated their 66th wedding anniversary at Thanksgiving that year.
For some reason everyone, including my parents, wondered for years after why in the world they chose opening weekend of Wisconsin’s deer season to wed in 1951. I’m still not clear whether or not dad was a deer hunter back then, but in all the years I remember, nearly up to the time he made his permanent move to heaven, those anniversary celebrations were planned around whether or not he’d even be home from deer camp or not.
I am the oldest of the 6 kids in my family. Dad and I were close. Many of our interests were the same. Dad was a businessman, a farm credit loan officer, then later an insurance agent. He was also a hobby farmer. We didn’t actually live on a farm because, as I remember it, mom liked “city” living. I can’t remember a time when my dad didn’t have a little piece of land out “a-ways” in the country. Over the years I baled hay, painted the inside of the house on the farm to ready it for new tenants, and ran, scared as all get out, from any of the assortment of animals currently residing on the land. I am NOT an animal person and didn’t like anything about the various and sundry cows, horses, pigs, chickens, cats, or dogs that lived on dad’s land at one time or another.
When I was a pre-teen in the 1960s, dad had a beautiful Smith-Corona typewriter in its own little carrying case. He did all his business homework using that typewriter. But it was off-limits to me. Until the night my baby sister Lisa was born. I was 11 and mom went into labor in the middle of the night. A babysitter couldn’t come until about 6 am so mom and dad hauled me out of bed, set the typewriter up for me to play on, and told me my job for the next several hours was to make sure that if the house started on fire I got all the younger kids out of it. I’ve been enamored of the typewritten word ever since.
With 6 kids and a wife to provide for, and a hobby farm, Dad was always busy. And as more kids came along, it was natural for mom and dad to spend their time on the younger, needier kids. I have a typical oldest sibling personality, independent, bossy, and self-sufficient. After all, I had all of mom and dad’s attention first when they were enthralled with being new parents and spent every spare minute with their new creation, me. But there are a few very special things that happened with Dad that I’ll never forget, and that shaped my close relationship with him.
When I was about 12 Dad brought home a red, wind-up alarm clock and presented it to me. It matched the red mom had painted the furniture in the bedroom I shared with my younger sister. He told me that I was old enough to manage my own schedule. It was now my responsibility to get myself up in time for school and be on time for any other commitments I might have.
I loved that red alarm clock, mostly because my dad had made the effort to get it just for me. Most things we needed came from mom, but Dad himself must have gone to Kresge’s or Woolworth’s, put some thought into matching the color to my daily life, and gave it to me with a life lesson. I had that thing for years, and it eventually worked only when it rested upside down, but I hung on to it because I loved my dad for getting it just for me.
When I was 18 and “ran away from home” (on a bus) to be with that guy who turned out to be already married, Dad came and got me, no questions, no recrimination. In retrospect, it’s kind of a prodigal daughter story. I knew I’d disappointed my parents, and that I’d made a mistake, and dad knew that I knew. He and mom also knew I’d beat myself up more than they needed to beat me up. I loved them both for that.
Much later, after Randy and I had been married for several years, Randy thought he would get out of the Air Force. It was the mid-1980s when personal computers were just starting to make their appearance for home use. I knew a thing or two about computers from being in the Air Force. I thought I could make a living doing word processing and other personal computer work for people and small businesses that didn’t understand and couldn’t yet afford to own their own personal computer.
We arranged for me to go back to Wisconsin, work in dad’s insurance agency, and set up a word processing business in his downtown office until Randy was discharged. Win-win. Personal computers at that time cost about $5,000 and dad took me to his bank and put up one of his tractors as collateral on a loan so I could buy an Olivetti computer that only ran DOS. Ultimately, Randy ended up deciding to stay in the Air Force, and I went back to California, but that time working with my dad was precious for me. And it served to set me up as his lifelong, personal computer tech support representative. Dad embraced technology readily, but, man, he needed a lot of tech support for the rest of his life.
Toward the end of his life Dad got awfully cranky. And it was so hard to watch him physically deteriorate. But he never lost his very dry, and (in my opinion) very funny sense of humor. I think he and mom each gave me some of their best personality traits. I miss him more than I can say. After his FUN-eral (he once said it’s ok to laugh, after all the first three letters are F.U.N.), I took a picture of one of the photo collages we made of his life and had it made into a puzzle. I reassemble it every year in December and remember, with joy and gratitude, the good man who gave me life and love.
Happy Father’s Day, Dad. You’re the best dad a girl could have asked for.
P.S. I forgot to mention last week when I was telling about all the things we did in Wisconsin that we did, indeed, get to sing Why Do Fools Fall in Love at Hannah and Zach’s wedding. There’s video. You all will never get to see it!
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