Soapbox

 

    My father is a quiet man.

    In a house filled with boisterous, opinionated women,  my father spent most of his free time in his basement workshop.  When he poked his head upstairs, he liked to tell people that he’s 1/3 Indian, then go whistling out of the room, wondering how long it would take them to figure out that, no matter many generations back you start dividing… you just can’t end up 1/3 anything. Sometimes it took a while.
 

     His parents were good, upright, un-demonstrative people, clenched within themselves, mistrustful of the world and disconnected from each other. Dad seemed awkward, almost shy about discussing emotions or expressing affection for his children. When my mother was in the hospital when I was a child, I don't remember him talking with us about that scary, confusing time, but I do remember my father patiently, awkwardly trying to braid my hair every morning before school. I had to have my sister fix them later, but I liked the way it felt when he brushed my hair: safe, loved.

     Dad taught his girls how to use power tools, identify wildflowers and his grin of approval when we could successfully start a one-match, no paper fire on a camping trip made us feel 10 feet tall. Dad’s idea of a good time was pouring over topographical maps of the county. Then, on Saturdays, he would drive us out to some unnamed gravel road, three turns past the back of beyond, pull off where a weed-choked creek met the road and say,
    “I bet, if we hike up the hill here, there will be a little waterfall at the top.”
     And there always was, and we would sit beside it and eat our peanut butter and sweet pickle sandwiches while Daddy identified the bird songs for us and photographed ferns and moss.Once, on the way home, he pulled off the road and we sat for a minute in the twilight with the engine ticking quietly, listening to the hallejulah chorus of spring peepers from a nearby pond.

 

    He grew up ground between the teeth of the Great Depression, so he doesn’t spend money if he doesn’t have to. Though he was the boss, he took a sack lunch to work almost every day. His mantra has always been “Why buy something new when you don’t have to?”
    For my son's fifth Christmas, Dad gave him a hunk of petrified dinosaur bone that his own father had found decades before. My step mother was appalled.
     “You can’t give a 5 year old a rock for Christmas!” she insisted. So she bought Stephen a little hand-held electronic game, which ended up in the trash can pretty quickly. My son took his rock to kindergarten for “My favorite Christmas present” show and tell. Dad knew what he was doing.
     When my daughter was 5, he built her a doll house. It was supposed to be for her birthday but didn’t arrive til Christmas. Apparently there were issues with the curtain rods and Dad was unhappy with the ratio of rise to run on the first staircase he built, perhaps concerned that Skipper might injure herself one night rushing downstairs in the dark to let out the ceramic cat.

 

    My father is a quiet man. My lessons from him come, not from listening, but from observing: Do it right: even the small stuff, believe in what you love, pay attention to what’s around you, keep your promises.
    He has a quick temper, but the only thing I’ve ever seen him punch was a wall, and he spent the rest of that evening plastering over it, making things smooth again My father and mother stayed together long after the love was gone from their marriage because they had 5 children, and I think they felt they owed it to us to finish what they had started. When they finally parted as husband and wife they remained friends, and partners in the lives of their children.

    At around 50 years of age, my father told a new acquaintance that he hadn’t decided yet what he wanted to be when he grew up. Everybody laughed, as he had intended, but we took from it that Dad, though somewhat set in his ways, still was ready to learn new things. I try to bear that in mind today.

 

   At 80 years of age, my dad is still a pretty quiet guy But recently he has taken up the habit of ending our phone conversations by saying,“I love you, Trace” in an awkward, almost shy way.