Father’s Day, 2010

  • Walk­ing Clemen­tine in the June heat is a bit of a chore, so I waited until she was really fuss­ing at me before I put on my shoes and we headed out. I’m on the last chap­ters of Mimi’s newest sum­mer read, “Great Expec­ta­tions,” and was really much more inter­ested in what would hap­pen to Pip and Mr. Pro­vis and Miss Hav­isham than I was in snap­ping a grackle_little_sm.jpgleash on a hound­dog so we could both step into 90-degree weather that has mag­i­cally man­aged to go to 115% humid­ity and feels like a sauna with the lights left on. But Clemen­tine has to get busy sniff­ing all the same places she sniffed yes­ter­day, so there’s no point in try­ing to stall.

    I was feel­ing med­i­ta­tive as I set out, think­ing how books end with every­thing being explained one way or another and won­der­ing if any of us really get that lux­ury as our lives wind down. Do you ever have it out with this old enemy or that old friend and get some lengthy expo­si­tion from them that explains mys­ter­ies you been won­der­ing all your life? But then, real life is so much more intri­cate than a book — how many mys­ter­ies there are, how many of them only branch into other mys­ter­ies if you look at them closely.

    grackle_big.jpgAs we walked along, I became con­scious of a blob on the grass shoul­der near the side­walk. It turned out to be a rather unat­trac­tive and miserable-looking brown bird sit­ting on the lawn. An ener­getic twip-twip com­ing from a grackle up on the phone wire above us told the rest of the story.

    “Ohhh,” I said to the lawn bird. “You’re a fledg­ing, and you didn’t do that well on your maiden voy­age, did you?”

    He (or she) was quite large and fully formed, except for hav­ing a bald patch around each eye where the feath­ers hadn’t fin­ished. And, of course, wear­ing that sullen, unhappy expres­sion that baby birds always have when they’re exposed to pos­si­ble dan­ger, as if they’ve just wet their pants and want you to know that they’ll do it again if you don’t go away.

    We did go away, of course. At first, when Clem finally noticed the inter­est­ing lit­tle life form, she was all for going up and hav­ing a sniff (which made the twip-twipping par­ent very agi­tated), but since the young grackle didn’t look at all thrilled with this idea, I was able to dis­suade her. After we’d moved off enough that the par­ent stopped scold­ing us, I looked back, and saw the melan­choly lit­tle bird exe­cute sev­eral leaden hops across the lawn, as if it weighed a pound instead of an ounce. I have no idea how these things work them­selves out. But though sit­u­a­tions like this used to make me panic as a younger woman, I’m fairly cer­tain that when we go back that way tomor­row, we won’t find the same bird look­ing a day older, or bones and feath­ers to tes­tify to a cat or dog hav­ing made a meal of him. Some­how, he’ll get over his hope­less­ness and begin to hop and flap together, and then the twip-twips will serve as his North Star and tell him grackle_little.jpgwhere he needs to go.

    As Clemen­tine and I left them behind, I thought about my father. Or rather, I thought about the fact that I hadn’t been think­ing about my father. It’s Father’s Day, and my father has been gone for over 18 years. I never would’ve thought the years would fly by. That coun­try song “The Great­est Man I Never Knew” came out less than a year after Dad passed away, and I could hardly stand to hear the line “The man I thought would never die, has been gone almost a year.”

    Thank God, though, the dis­ap­point­ment and sor­row of that song (“He never said he loved me. / Guess he thought I knew.”) was not mine. You couldn’t be that close to some­one so very warm, lov­ing and sup­port­ive and not know you were loved. I don’t recall ever being in doubt, or need­ing to hear it expressed in words when he said it in hugs and jokes and looks.

    I do miss him, for sure. I used to feel the loss keenly and be amazed all the time to think that he wasn’t out there root­ing for me, a phone call or car trip away. But even then — and cer­tainly now — there’s no open wound or big hole where he was, because there wasn’t unfin­ished busi­ness between us. He was such a hero to me always — so funny, so wise, so ready for life’s next adven­ture — and I don’t think the years have shown me any­thing to make me doubt my assessment.

    When Fr. Elias acknowl­edged the fathers in church today, he went for an obvi­ous point: With­out our fathers, none of us would be here. We chuck­led at it, but you know, it’s not as obvi­ous as it sounds. With­out my father, some­how I don’t think I would’ve got­ten through the last cou­ple decades, even though he wasn’t around to see it. Some­times, the fledg­ling makes a bad go of it and has to spend some time in the grass fig­ur­ing things out. And at times like that, if all you have going for you is the lit­tle sound of Dad telling you where home is, it becomes the most impor­tant thing in the world to you.

    Happy Father’s Day, Dad. I miss you.


    Related posts:

    1. May 20, 2010
    2. Angry wildlife, part II
    3. Wildlife to Grace — buzz off!
    4. My Dad and Lau­rel & Hardy
    5. Pointil­list Clementine

    June 20th, 2010 | Grace | 2 Comments |

2 Responses and Counting...

  • s-p 06.20.2010

    Beau­ti­ful. I hope my kids remem­ber me so fondly.

  • Mimi

    What a won­der­ful post, may your father’s Mem­ory be Eternal.

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