Posts Tagged ‘dad’
Like Dad
Baby, it’s cold outside. The horses had frosty whiskers this morning, to rival all the other deep-freeze overnight lows they’ve endured in their time with us.
While the air was exceedingly crisp outside, the house was toastier than Santa’s workshop with Cyndie’s Christmas Cookie-palooza, Day 1, in full swing. The double oven was working overtime to keep up with all the delectible treats Cyndie and her team of guests were moving through it. The post-bake decorating station was a spectacle this year, with frostings and sprinkles applied to the wafting sounds of a unique mix of Christmas music, courtesy of some algorithm at Apple Music.
Since I was in charge of keeping the fire fed in the fireplace and the dog’s nose pointed anywhere other than at foodstuffs, I let the whole operation pass without taking a single photo. I apologize. That was a total lapse of thinking on my part. I did get a shot of some behind-the-scenes aftermath, though.
I stopped by the kitchen to take a photo of a recent success on my part that had me thinking of my dad. A little of his mechanical ingenuity and DIY solutions were passed to me, along with his exceptional ability to tolerate unfinished projects.
For some 10 or 12 years, Cyndie has begrudgingly lived with a problematic corner cabinet that has a pair of lazy susan shelves where we store pots and pans. When it would get stuck, I assumed it was because pan handles weren’t being oriented logically, or it was being overstuffed. When it became stiff, a confident nudge from my foot would close it just fine.
When the shelves finally collapsed from the top and bottom brackets two days ago, I was forced to figure out how it was supposed to work. How the heck did they install it in the first place? Oh, there are adjustment screws. Hmm.
I discovered there was a detent in the plastic top piece that was supposed to match the springy metal brace. Imagine that.
A Philips screwdriver, ten minutes of puttering with adjustments, and we had a perfectly functioning lazy susan corner cabinet. I could have done that years ago. I suppose Cyndie wouldn’t be quite as thrilled with the results if it hadn’t been an ongoing nuisance for a decade.
The quick fix had me feeling chuffed. Figuring out how it was supposed to work reminded me of my dad’s keen skills in that realm. Realizing I had let something go for years without properly solving it dampened my pride and reminded me that I inherited both good and bad traits from that wonderful, complex, ingenious, troubled man that I both looked up to and feared in the years we were both alive.
I think Dad would have approved of the way I fixed that corner lazy susan by figuring out the way it was intended to work.
I’m going to focus on that and not on how long it took for me to get around to it.
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Outliving Dad
The reason I easily remember the last time I saw my father alive is that it was my wedding day on September 19, 1981. Forty years ago, October 2nd was a Friday. Just out of college with a degree in education, Cyndie had unexpectedly nabbed a job with the Edina Police Department and I had yet to find employment. That Friday, on our first week home after our honeymoon, she was on a ride-along with a patrol officer.
I was home alone for the first time since we’d been married and the guys at the station found it humorous at first when I needed to contact her in the middle of the shift.
“Is it an emergency?”
“Well, sort of.” I was in a state of shock over having received the news in a phone call from my younger brother. “My dad died.”
Cyndie came home early from that ride-along shift.
Myocardial Infarction. My dad was 62.
On October 2nd, 2021, I am 62, a fact that seems to mean more to my doctor than me when it comes to my ultimate longevity. But I can’t deny a certain level of awareness about reaching this milestone.
I’ve spent the last forty years navigating being married, working a technical career, and raising children without my dad available for advice or guidance. Now I will embark on the rest of my life journey without having had his example of being an old Hays man.
After Cyndie and I returned from honeymooning up in the woods on the North Shore of Lake Superior, with a stop in Hayward for a couple of nights on the way home, we were taking our very first steps navigating life together in an unfamiliar rented duplex on Cedar Avenue near Lake Nokomis in Minneapolis.
A few days into our first week, it occurred to me that I should pay a visit to my parents before my dad took off for his weekend jaunt “to the lake.” The little fishing cottage on the north shore of Lake Mille Lacs was his version of heaven, I think, or simply a place he could go to be away from, well, the rest of what he found depressing at home.
It was Thursday afternoon and Mom said, “You just missed him.” He got a jump ahead of weekend traffic leaving on a Thursday. I would never see my dad again.
The story I was told is that it appeared as if he had pulled the bedcovers back, sat down on the edge of the bed, and fell back, dead.
This was six months after an initial heart attack that he described to me from his hospital bed as being “a pain I would never wish upon my worst enemy.”
That description helped inspire me beyond merely not wanting to be a depressed alcoholic like him, but not wanting to develop that classic beer belly and clog my arteries with an unhealthy diet. My doctor thinks that still might not be enough. He worries about my genes.
Other than having my older brother, Elliott for a sibling reference, I am now in uncharted territory.
I hope you are taking good care of your ticker, E.
Mine is just a little uneasy today over all the remembering. I expect its got plenty of mileage left, though. I work to keep my heart filled with plenty of love, both coming in and going out.
Thanks, Ralph, for everything you have taught me, in life and in your sudden death forty years ago today.
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Old Photos
When the project is to write stories and the time to do so is very limited, getting sidetracked down a rabbit hole of long-lost images for hours on end can be an exasperating diversion, despite the value of memories it rekindles. It’s both good and bad, all at the same time.
I can’t help myself from sharing a few random gems discovered in the archives. To be honest, it feels a little like preparing for my own funeral slide show. Maybe if I share them now, these won’t be so shocking when they eventually appear in a memorial service someday.
Who am I kidding? I’m not going to show any of the shocking ones while I’m still alive.
Before I even get to photos of me, here is a wonderful, candid capture of my father, Ralph, at Christmastime in our old Intervale Ranch farmhouse on the edge of Edina and Eden Prairie, MN.
I’m not sure what he is saying, but I would rate his expression as leaning more toward amiable than not, which was a precious thing due to the preponderance for his attitude to be otherwise. When I miss my father, it is his good moods I like to remember. This shot does a good job of causing me to miss him.
I found this gem of me sitting on Cyndie’s bed in her bedroom in their house in Edina.
I would tease her today about all the myriad clutter adorning her walls and on her bed, except it happened to be strikingly similar to the way my teenage bedroom looked. Maybe that is one of the reasons we felt that early soul connection. For all our outward differences, the most intimate parts of ourselves were a good match. Our bedrooms were a manifestation of who we were becoming as we careened toward adulthood.
Here is one of my early visits to the northern Wisconsin vacation lodge club, Wildwood, which the Friswolds and a group of like-minded other Twin Cities families shared as an Association.
With my trusty old Alvarez guitar.
Finally, a shot of me modeling a birthday gift of new waders, while sporting one of my father’s old bowling shirts.
This was during my brief period of dabbling in the art of fly fishing. I think I was feeling pretty chuffed about my birthday haul.
For the record, that is the pre-remodeled kitchen of the Friswold’s home on Comanche Court as a backdrop.
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Hmm. Composing all that wasn’t too hard. Maybe I will succumb to the ease of narrating photos for my vacation-week posts. It’ll be like the old (dreaded) vacation slide shows people would foist upon unsuspecting family and friends.
“Here we are, standing in front of Niagara Falls…”
Time –or lack of it– will tell, …whether text or images will dominate.
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Overwhelmingly Loved
I am living a charmed life lately. Really. It’s a bit overwhelming. How do you adequately thank someone for loving you?
Pequenita has been dishing out so much affection for me that I am almost feeling smothered by her. At the same time, who can resist the charm of a cat who repeatedly seeks a perch somewhere on top of you?
She can be so insistent for attention when I get home from work that I have to pick her up to protect my legs from becoming her scratching post. If I make the mistake of choosing to lay down with her for a few minutes at that hour of the day, I usually become the victim of an unplanned nap.
She oftentimes finds a suitable spot on my legs and joins me for a snooze.
My lovely wife has been spoiling me with extra special attention by choosing healthy options for my goal of eating a reduced sugar diet, and tweaking her bread recipes to incorporate more diverse grains with extra substance. Lately I have a thing for millet in bread, along with a fondness for wheat berry and sunflower nuts, in addition to the usual whole grains.
Yesterday, Cyndie nailed it with a couple of excellent loaves, hot out of the oven at dinner time, while she was simultaneously whipping up some fresh homemade pasta to serve as a base under her delectable leftover beef bourguignon that was recently pulled from the freezer.
It certainly feels like being loved, to be fed like that.
My mom gave Cyndie some special training on how to make the bread I grew up with. Talk about love!
Last night, while looking at the beautiful loaves she created, I suddenly noticed an insight about how my father must have felt about the bread mom baked for him throughout their life together. Mom told us stories about how she first learned to bake bread when they were newlyweds stationed in a fire lookout tower in Glacier National Park.
By the time I was born, over 10-years later, she had definitely mastered the craft. Her homemade bread was a staple in our kitchen. Dad was a stern scolder when we didn’t cut straight slices. We toasted it and fried it, and I recall Dad used a slice to soak up the juice on the meat platter when the menu involved steak.
My parents weren’t very demonstrative of their love, but looking back, those years of homemade bread reveal a pretty good version of it.
Now I am blessed with the same. It is overwhelmingly lovely.
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On Fatherhood
Each morning, after I have finished tending to the horse chores, Delilah and I go for a walk around the circumference of our property boundaries. Lately, I have noticed this time is becoming a particularly fruitful one for inspiration and insights.
Yesterday I was thinking about fatherhood. My children are both grown and living their own lives at this point, so I am well beyond the day-to-day responsibilities of raising them. We are now in a phase that I hadn’t really given any thought to: being a father to adult children.
It occurred to me that when I was the age that they are now, my father had been dead for about 4 years. I was 22 when my father died. I don’t have the benefit of having had a relationship with my dad while in my adult years that I can use to inform and guide my decisions as a father from this point forward.
I suppose that could be seen as a feature instead of a flaw, in some regards. However, I’m finding that not having had my father alive for most of my adult life has me now feeling somewhat unschooled about what comes next. I’m sure that the manual that comes with each kid would have provided answers for any questions I had from here on out, if it had been included at the time of delivery.
Thinking back, the only type of feedback I recall receiving from my father during the time our lives overlapped involved indirect grumpiness and griping. If it came at all, direct praise or reprimand was rare enough that I hold few recollections of them. He was not one to tell me he loved me. That level of connection needed to be assumed. We did the best we could with it.
I definitely love my kids and am able to tell them so, though doing it still doesn’t come naturally for me. At this point, I don’t really know how to say or do much more than that, from within the role of being their father. After they left the nest, they became more like friends for me than people whose lives I direct.
Luckily, they are great to have as friends. From here on out, when the time comes for something more than friendly advice from me, I’ll be winging it; hoping to be the father I would like to have had as an adult.
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Relative Something 