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Sunday, June 21st, 2009
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10:31p - Happy Fathers' Day!
In my parents' house, my father has always been the quiet one in the background, while my mother is the loud one, the social one, the one who takes charge. So naturally, when my friends at home think of my family, they think of my mother. Drew even claims he's never heard my father talk, which is blatently not true (but still funny).
But I've seen a side of Dad that few people have. He's not all that different of a person when my mother isn't around, but he has a chance to shine. Mom can be a bit overwhelming, and he often allows her to do the talking. Without her there, he talks and shares more, from his thoughts on politics - usually a bit vague and simultaneously insightful - to his quirky sense of humor. Thankfully, throughout my childhood, I always had some time set aside that was time between just Dad and I.
When I was little, it was going to the Burning Bush town pool. Mom didn't like going to the pool, so Dad would bring me and we'd stay there for hours. I'd swim around for a while, showing off my ability to do handstands and flips underwater (I certainly wasn't doing them that well on land) and pretend I was a world-class gymnast. He would applaud, and then get into the water himself. He always got in by jumping in off of the high dive. I think he liked the cold rush of water. Eventually, I followed him and did the same. Once he was adjusted to the water, we'd go into the semi-deep part, and he'd pull me onto his shoulders. He'd crouch down in the deeper part, stand up quickly, and launch me off his shoulders into the water. It was incredible! Just for a moment, I was flying. As I got older, he taught me how to dive off of the high dive. I was scared, of course, and I think I climbed down a couple of times before I finally did it. But standing at the bottom of the ladder, he talked me through it. And then I finally did it - a different kind of flying, I never got enough of the hang of it to do anything but sort of lean into the dive, but that was enough for me. At the end of pool time, we'd towel off as much as we could, but still soaked the seats of his Taurus that we had named Mork (because everything was egg-shaped). He didn't care, so long as I was happy.
My love for the water extended to competitive sports, when I joined the swim team in sixth grade. Dad drove me two or three days a week to practice, all the way to Schenectady at first, and then to the Clifton Park YMCA. Sometimes we would listen to the radio, and not speak at all, but just be comfortable in our enjoyment of the music. (As a sidenote, as a little kid I was always impressed at Dad's ability to identify songs on the radio during their first few seconds. I thought he knew all of the songs in the world! It was a disappointing day when I found out he didn't.) Sometimes, we would talk, about any number of subjects. I would ask him his opinions, something he rarely shared with Mom around, as it can be hard to get a word in when she's sharing her opinions.
At some point in-between swim team and high school, skiing became our default activity. My mom skis, and actually taught my Dad how to do it, but was never particularly willing to ski unless conditions were perfect. Dad loved to ski, even when the snow was rather crummy. The fact that they had a Sunday afternoon family deal at Bromley Mountain only made it better, as Dad is incredibly thrifty (I get this from him as well). So for a couple of years, Dad and I would go skiing regularly on Sunday afternoons. I was almost as good as him at that point, so we were able to have fun on all of the black diamond slopes and bomb down the blue squares. Besides Bromley, we also went to Gore Mountain, which had the advantage of being relatively nearby. Skiing with Dad was immensely fun because he was always incredibly upbeat. Mom tended to complain. In contrast, whenever we were on a three or four-person lift with someone we didn't know, Dad would cheerfully ask, "Have you been to the top yet? The weather's pretty good today." I think he would have made that comment about the weather even if it was sleeting. He was so chipper that Mom and I started to call him Mr. Rodgers and sing, "Won't you be my neighbor?" As downhill skiing got more expensive and the deals seemed to disappear, we went downhill skiing less and less. But around that time, I had been on the cross-country ski team for two years, and started to do that on weekends. This time, I was the one who taught Dad how to ski. It was pretty funny at first, because he had it all wrong. But once he realized he had to push rather than pull with his poles, he kept up pretty well. We'd ski along, content in our silent company.
Once I got to college, Dad began some new traditions to remind me that he was always there for me. Specifically, he sent me the Sunday comics every week. On Sundays at home, we would sit around and read the paper, and I'd always ask him where the comics were. Since I didn't get them in college, he sent them, often with some newspaper article he thought I would be interested in. I always looked forward to getting my weekly envelope from Dad in the mail. These days, he doesn't send me comics. But instead, he's started regularly sending me something else - pictures on my cell phone. He's gotten more into texting than I ever could have thought - he hardly ever used the computer at home - and loves taking photos and sending them to me. I actually remember the first photo he ever took on his phone - of Mom and I cross-country skiing in Saratoga State Park. Since then, he's sent me photos of covered bridges, a mama duck and her babies crossing the street, Mom and him cycling, and sunsets. Basically, anytime he's doing something that he thinks I'll find interesting, he sends me a photo. Because I refuse to erase any of them, I have so many on my phone that I'm running out of memory!
Even though he exudes calm and quietness, I've always found spending him with Dad to be an adventure. He's funny in an unpredictable way, and taught me to take chances that I never thought I could take. So I'm glad to have Dad as my father, and was glad to talk to him on the phone today (and text him!).
I wrote this piece my senior year of college for a Writing for Magazines assignment, but I still like it. It covers a lot of the same stuff, but put it in context of what I was going through in college as well.
( Lift Me Up )
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