I always imagined an 80 year old man to be shrunken, hunched
over, walking with a cane, hearing aids, glasses, mumbling to himself. And here we have this guy who stands 5’ 10”, good posture with no help from any
kind of brace, still cuts his own grass, still works on and washes his own
cars, doesn't even have a limp, has most of his hair, still sees well without
the aid of glasses, still hears well again with no hearing devices.
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| Dad cutting my Son's hair June 2012 |
In honor of 80 years, I was going to write some kind of tribute and so I settled on 80 things I love about Dad. I realized that some folks would actually want to read this, so I shortened it to just 8. So, each of these things represent a decade of Dad’s amazing life up until now. However, you must keep in mind that I have only known the man for 46 years, so my experience with him is rather narrow.
So, without further ado…
8 Things I Love About My Dad
8. Dad talks tough, but he is all about self-control - Yeah I have Dad to thank for this. Sometimes growing up Dad would bark at us, even threaten us within an inch of our life, but he never killed us – not once. This led me to believe that 1. He was either a lot of talk, or 2. He would have killed us but there was a rational part of him that was able to reign it in so that he did not end up having to spend the rest of his life in prison. Self-control, I learned it from him. Thanks Dad, 1. For teaching me how not to kill my kids even when they deserved it and 2. For not killing me.
7. He never failed to provide for us no matter what – You know in the several years that I lived at home, the country went through all sorts of economical fluctuations both good and bad. There were the really amazing times, like the day Dad brought home an RV and told us that he bought it. Just like that. One day we were a family of 5 driving around in a Chevrolet Station Wagon, the next in a large fiberglass camper that slept 6. Dad drove us all over the place in that thing. We even took a two month vacation one Summer with the thing and drove all the way to Canada. Then there were the tough times. It was the big oil crunch in the late 70s. In case you didn't know, Dad is a hairstylist and has always cut hair so long as I have known him.
In the late 70s, no one came to get their haircut anymore. So, rather than make excuses, Dad took on some other jobs. We never knew there were money problems, because dad never complained about it, ever. Me and my brothers never heard him blame the economy for tough times, or use the recession to take a break from having to work or look for work. He just, worked and worked and worked and made no excuses, because he didn't have to.
We never saw an interruption in our every Saturday pizza, and our regular weekly meals. We always had a new wardrobe on the first day of school, except for Chris who refused to wear new clothes. J My Mom and Dad both cut hair to provide for us, and it worked. They still do. I learned that a Man does not make excuses; he makes money and brings it home for his family, period, no matter what.
6. He loves my Mom stubbornly – My Mom is amazing don’t get me wrong, but sometimes the things she fought us for seemed silly, even ridiculous. However, we never told Mom this, or Dad. See, we knew that bad mouthing Mom was pointless with Dad. Not only did we risk dying, but Dad would probably have first killed us, then in defending Mom’s honor he would have killed us again while telling us we were wrong and Mom was right and to shut up about it.
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| Niagara Falls June 2012 |
That’s right I said he would kill us twice. Because once you have gone as far as to kill your kid, you can’t get booked for killing him again, so why not? Anyway, not only did dad defend Mom even when she was wrong, he let us know in no uncertain terms, that Mom always came first, period. I think he knew that once we were long gone and grown up, she would still be there with him, and she never forgets anything. Or he just loves her that much.
Either way, I learned 1. What love looks like in a marriage, and 2. How the best approach to parenting is a team effort –a united front. Thanks Dad for teaching me that.
5. He is the life of the party - a true entertainer. Man can that man dance. Party after party, event after Mexican event, quinceaneras, weddings, funerals, there was Pop moving faster than the speed of light with his feet, moving Mom all over the room while everyone else was winded. When he wasn't dancing he was cutting up with the relatives.
When my grandmother was alive, I swear dad saw it upon himself to make her laugh every time she turned around. One liners, complicated jokes that took setting up, crazy off the wall comments. Dad was a goofball, and people loved it. They still do. Today, Dad works in a large building full of hairdressers, mostly women and gay men, and he has them all in stitches most of the time.
He is a comedian alright, but he can also sing, and he can sermonize and deliver a eulogy that would bring Hitler to tears. He is also a story teller. Everything that has ever happened to Dad will be in a story of sorts - a dramatic retelling of the event with details that had to be slightly embellished in order to make it interesting of course. Mom is the fact-checker in the relationship and is commonly on hand to let folks know that “it did not happen like that.” But when she is not around, the stories are amazing.
Dad has always been an artist when it comes to making people laugh, cry and listen. I have always tried to mimic his ability to do so, and maybe one day I will be as good as he is at it.
4. He doesn’t half-ass anything – My Dad is not just a hairstylist. He is also a barber. But not just a barber, but a licensed barber instructor. Wait and that’s still not all. He is also a cosmetologist. And… you guessed it, a licensed cosmetology instructor. If you don’t happen to be in the know, a barber, is different than a hairstylist and the two are different than a cosmetologist. It was not enough that Dad cuts hair for a living, he had to be the best. He spent a great deal of time in his early life traveling around and doing shows for folks, explaining to them how to cut hair and style hair and color hair in ways that he knew best.
Aside from all of that, Dad is a carpenter, and an electrician, a plumber, an auto mechanic and an all around handy man. He was never satisfied to pay someone to do something that he could do himself. I spent many a Sunday under the hood of a car or under the car itself with Dad while he fixed things and I handed him tools. Occasionally he would bump his head on something and then I would learn new words to add to my vocabulary. Dad is an explorer, a learner and a tireless student. A few years ago I gave him a computer, and to this day he not only uses it daily to read scary conservative political emails, but he actually gets on Facebook and posts on people’s walls.
Facebook, at 80. Wow. Dad you taught me that “if that guy can do it, I can probably do it too.” You taught me how to troubleshoot what’s wrong with my car and my friends cars. You taught me how to dig a hole, mow a lawn, paint a building, pour cement, lay bricks, trim a hedge, change a light bulb in an oven, fix a dryer, hammer a nail, put up sheet rock, frame out a building, put in insulation, lay carpet, build a roof, shingle the roof, fix a motor, clean a battery connection, change a fuel filter, change oil, fix brakes on a car, pull the head off of a motor and replace the head gasket (without catching the fuel line on fire), and the list could go on and on, Pop. I have learned so much from being around you and from just being unafraid to try something new and then eventually master it. That is you in me. Thanks!
3. He can still kick above your head – in the 80s I was pretty much convinced at the age of 15 that I was going to be Rocky Balboa. I had purchased a 60 lb body bag to suspend from a rafter in the garage and pummel on during my intense work out sessions. I also had a speed-bag to practice my punching on. Dad helped me hang that up by building a custom fixture for it out of wood.
One day, me and my friend were in the garage hitting the bag when Dad walked in. He had to be in his 60s back then, and he said, “I don’t need to do all that punching, because I can KICK…” on the word KICK he lifted his leg straight up off the ground and hit the bag right where the person’s face would have been, nearly knocking the bag off of it’s rope “…above your head” then he brought his leg down and walked off.
Me and my friend laughed a little bit at the randomness of
it all, but we were both impressed that he could do that. My Dad can still kick “above your head.” Not sure when that will come in handy, but if
anyone ever needs a good kick above the head, just ask Dad, I am sure he has
been waiting all these years for someone to need him in that way.
My Dad has periods where he works out and some where he doesn't but he has always been strong and healthy and tireless. I hope to aspire to that one day.
2. He is strikingly handsome – Okay, now I understand that this is a subjective point of view here, but my Dad is pretty handsome. I mean he must be, because people say I look just like him, so it has to be true. See what I did there? Yes, I always thought that my dad with his ability to use his voice, and put on an act for anyone anywhere would have made an excellent Hollywood actor. I think he missed his calling honestly.
I have had girlfriends in the past tell me that my dad is handsome and
that they would stay with me forever because I would probably look like him as
I grew older. All those girlfriends have
left me for other reasons entirely, but that is beside the point. The problem was with them really. No seriously, they were all bad bad girlfriends.
1. He had regrets. He made changes – okay, serious here. My Dad has made some pretty solid decisions in the past. He has been stubborn at times and made rash decisions. Haven’t we all? But, I got to see him have regrets. He let me know when a decision he made was a bad one. He let me see that side of him that fails, and then gets up and tries again -- tries something different this time.
He let me see the part of him that realizes that his point of view was wrong and then he let me see how he changed his point of view to accommodate for his new knowledge. It was subtle and one of those things that we never talked about. My Dad showed me that he could appear very stubborn, but deep down he learned from his mistakes and he did not go on making the same ones.
Because of his regrets, he changed. This has been a major, major thing for
me. I am who I am because of this. My whole life has been about one stubborn
decision after another, and how I have had to learn and learn and learn and
change to accommodate for what I have learned.
Because I was younger I got to see Dad raise kids, make decisions about money, about drinking alcohol, about morality and culture. I saw him change from a guy who bad mouthed one group of folks, to a guy who praised those folks later.
Dad, thank you most of all for making mistakes and not being
afraid to admit when you were wrong about something. Thanks for teaching me how to accommodate and
change based on my knowledge of the world around me changing. I know you don’t agree with me when it comes
to politics, but the reason I am who I am today is because of what you taught
me.
I love you Pop. I hope your next 80 years are just as amazing
as these have been. Happy Birthday!
Your son -- you know, the hard-head…
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| Me (in my diaper) and Dad (In his barber smock) |
