On Father’s Day 2009, I wrapped up a shirt from Eddie Bauer
and a Hallmark book about grandparents with the inscription “Baby Simon due February 13, 2010”
inside the front cover. My dad pulled
out the book and stared at it. And my
mom stared at it. There was a moment of
total confusion and then realization lit up their faces. “February 13.” My dad smiled. “That’s almost my birthday.” His reaction was quiet because my dad was
quiet. My husband asked me later if I
thought he was happy about the news at all.
“Oh, he’s happy,” I told him. “My
dad doesn’t squeal or jump or scream, but that doesn’t make him any less
elated. He loves babies, and it is
finally his turn to be a grandpa.” When
I called a few months later to tell him that baby was a boy, his enthusiasm
seemed a little more tempered. I wonder
now if he had some inkling of what was coming. '
On Father’s Day 2010, I brought my
four-month-old Eli to a small country cemetery outside Enon, OH because it was
the closest I could get to introducing him to his grandpa. My dad died from an aggressive form of
leukemia just four weeks before his first grandchild was born. I haven’t been back to the cemetery since,
and not just because it takes almost two hours to drive there. Sometimes I feel a little sheepish because it
seems like a good daughter should honor her father by visiting his
remains. But as years have crept by and
my own little family has grown, I’ve come to realize that what remains of my
dad on earth isn’t contained in that plot of dirt. Let me tell you where it is.
First
and foremost, there’s these three faces.
Yes, they look a lot like their dad, but I can find the McLaughlin genes
in there, too. Eli inherited his grandpa’s
name, his love for running, and apparently his clumsiness, too. And all of his orneriness. My dad, a relentless prankster, used to hide
things when we visited other people’s houses.
He hid a dinner roll on top of my aunt’s ceiling fan one Thanksgiving;
when she found it around Easter, it took her some time to figure out what it
had once been, but she knew exactly who to blame. Through the years, my grandma’s picture
frames were turned sideways and upside down, an empty Mountain Dew bottle hid in
one of her fake plants for several weeks, and once, I opened my lunch at school
to find a cicada shell staring up at me.
(I handled that well. Or
not.) So when I returned to teaching
after spring break, just after Eli had turned a year old, and discovered ants
swarming the computer bag I’d put on the floor, I shouldn’t have been surprised. Further investigation revealed that Eli had “hidden”
a banana in the front pocket, probably sometime before spring break. The banana and the computer bag were
considerably past caring. I could almost
hear my dad laughing. Like grandpa, like
grandson, right? Dad’s pranks were
always the right kind: they made us laugh and they made us feel loved. I’m so glad to see his humor in my own kids.
Other
men like to fish, hunt, and play golf.
My dad liked to garden, and he did it with all the enthusiasm our
suburban yard could handle. His garden
was larger than my first house, and it yielded enough to feed an entire
neighborhood. Once, a friend dropped me
off after swim team practice and was shocked to see tomatoes lining the whole
driveway, piled in produce baskets and laundry baskets and anything else that
could hold them. “What is he going to do
with all of those tomatoes?” my friend asked.
“He’ll can lots of juice and lots
of sauce. And he’ll give a bunch away,”
I replied. My friend went home with a
bushel of tomatoes. Years later when dad
tilled the ground and staked the fence and helped me plan my own first garden, he
didn’t bat an eye when I planted fourteen tomato plants. (Those of you who
garden just gasped.) It turns out that a single girl cannot possibly eat that
many tomatoes, no matter how creative she is in the kitchen. So I gave them away. My dad taught me to always go overboard so
you have something to share, and not just with tomatoes. Through the years, he and my mom were
faithful to quietly help families, friends, and organizations in need, even
when that meant going without the flashy lifestyle their peers enjoyed. I noticed.
And I learned. His green thumb
(or maybe his creativity in combating garden pests) might have skipped me, but
I know how to live a generous life.
My dad never failed to sacrifice
for my well-being. He got up early and
stayed up (sort of) late. He spent days
of his life working as a volunteer referee at my swim meets just to be a part
of something I cared about. If my
computer broke in college, he was there that day. He supported me when I wanted to switch
schools, even though it meant taking some heat from his peers. If I’d let him be there, he was there. And when I let him down (I’d tell you about
my freshman year of college, but you don’t want to know) he didn’t hold his
sacrifice over my head. He gave me grace
and a second chance, and ultimately I pulled myself together because I didn’t
want to disappoint him. He rarely
yelled, but he didn’t need to. His
disappointment was my worst punishment.
He gave me the start to the life I have, and he modeled a healthy
parent/child relationship for me. His
example is present on my best parenting days, and it spurs me on during my
worst.
It has been five Father’s Days
without my dad now, and I’m finally mulling the possibility of taking the kids
to his grave. But thank goodness, that
is only a marker. What remains of my
precious dad is alive and well in the legacy he left on this earth. I am blessed to be called his daughter.
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