Father's Day again already?
It seems like it was just Father's Day a few weeks ago, but the wheel turns, and here we are again. The time does seem to compress as we get older, eh? Even as the pace of our life slows down, the time seems to go by quicker. My Old Man used to remind me that this was because, when you're 10 years old, each year is 1/10th of your life, while when you're 70, it's only 1/70th of your life; that makes a difference.
On Father's Day, I always spend some time thinking about Dad, and about my grandfathers, too. I learned a lot from all three of these men. I learned a lot about being a husband, a father, a grandfather, and a man. Here are a few of those lessons.
From Dad
Dad had several pearls of wisdom he passed on from time to time. First and foremost among them was "Work comes first." A man, he would remind me, works. A man produces value to his world, to his community, to his family. A man with no purpose was a figure of scorn. Most of all, a man works to care for his family, to provide for them, and to ensure their security in all their needs. If that means shoveling manure or laying concrete in the hot sun, if that means spending the summer nailing shingles on roofs, then that's what you do. But you should also be looking ahead, thinking, "Where will this take me?"
Dad was a man you could depend on. I remember asking him about a decision I had to make in my previous career, and he replied, "I don't know the particulars, all I can give you is my judgement," and I replied, "Dad, it's your judgement that I value." He was a thoughtful man who considered things before him and thought before acting. He was also a man of his word; if he said he was going to do something, he did it. He was an honest man. One of his stock sayings was that being honest was an absolute; a man is either honest or he is not. Dad never told a lie in his life. Nor have I, and that's a lesson I've worked to pass on to my grandsons: Always tell the truth.
And when I signed up to join the Army, Dad told me of the pride of service, the pride of my being the third generation in our family to do so. One thing he said always stuck with me: "This will change you in ways people who haven't been through it will never understand." As usual, he was right.
Dad taught me how to shoot, how to move quietly in the woods, how to fish, how to start a fire, and much, much more.
And in the 57 years I shared my life with Dad, he never once told me he loved me. Dad was a creature of a time when men didn't say things like that out loud, especially to their sons. Oh, I always knew he did; he showed his family how he cared for them rather than telling them. But Dad did tell me something that was much, much more meaningful; he told me he was proud of me. I could have been a complete screw-up, and he still would have loved me, but being proud of me is a different story.
And, of course, my grandfathers had a profound impact as well.
From Grandpa Baty
My maternal grandfather's life was characterized by imagination mixed with whimsy. He was, like all the men of his time, a man who worked; he had fifty acres of sandy Wapsipinicon River bottom land that he kept in field corn, popcorn, and soybeans, and he was a carpenter who had a good local business shoring up old barns with steel cable and turnbuckles in a process he had developed himself, and which he was pretty good at. But he had a singular wit. His daily demeanor was marked, at almost every moment, with a broad grin. Many were his adventures. Fish would poke their heads out of the river to speak with him. He was on a first-name basis with every squirrel on his farm. One time, in the middle of the night, a raccoon tapped on his bedroom window, waking him up to tell him the neighbor's cattle had gotten out and were in his cornfield.
He was a man who took great joy in life, and that's something we should all do.
From Grandpa Clark
My paternal grandfather was a man of scrupulous honesty. Born in 1894, he was literally a man out of a different world, having grown up in the era of cloth-covered biplanes. But while the men in my family have been honest men, Grandpa Clark took it to an extreme; he had no mental filter. He thought nothing of walking up to a young woman in the family and remarking, "Wow, you've put on some weight." There was no malice in it; just an observation. But from that, I learned the value of discretion. But he loved a good joke, usually with himself as the foil, and he loved to sing, with "Billy Boy" being his favorite. He taught me the value not only of discretion, but of humor, and he taught me that one should never take oneself too seriously.
See Also: Photographs and Memories: Dad's Vest
Photographs and Memories: Father's Day Wishes for My Grandpa, a Man of a Different Time
In an hour or so, my wife and I have to depart for the airport to pick up our oldest and her husband. We'll be spending the coming week fishing and sightseeing, and I'll be spending that time enjoying being Dad. Being a father and grandfather is one of the things I treasure most in my life, second only to being a husband to my dear wife. A big part of the reason I can treasure that is because of the lessons I learned from those three men.
Happy Father's Day, all you Dads out there.
