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I had a great day on Father’s Day with my kids and my wife.  So great it was, that I completely forgot…about my own father.  So danged typical of me, too.  I didn’t mean to, I never do, but the fact is, I did.  It wasn’t until 9PM that I remembered.  I am the youngest of five, so I figured the other four covered it.  9:15 comes and I carry my oldest son to bed, him having lonnnng passed out on the couch to Phineas and Ferb – man, I very much love watching that with both of my sons, especially when I get to explain something that was funny to me, yet way over their heads.  Those are the small moments that I will keep, along with the bigger ones. 

(after the jump, there is an embedded video so very fitting of this personal post – it will make a nice background – please enjoy this post, if you have the time)

Back to my father, so at 9:15, as I am carrying my oldest son up to bed, a flashback nails me and hard.  I actually remembered what I believe was the last time my father carried me to bed.  I can say that, because it was shortly before he moved out and we moved from Newark to Edgemoor.  Don’t be misled, he’s very much alive, but that was the last days of when I lived with him on a regular basis, all 30 years ago…I turn 40 in a couple of weeks (plus a couple days, but who’s counting).  That flashback almost floored me.  One, because it was most definitely a repressed memory that found its way out.  *BOOM*  It was there.  Second, because there I was, carrying my seven-year-old to bed.  A few years shy of the age I was for my moment, but close enough for me.  I went from carrying him to hugging him and swearing to him, to God, and to my wife (she wasn’t upstairs with me at the time) that I will never want to allow that to happen to this family.  I am a realist and I know things change and evolve, but the key is, I am humble to improve self and I don’t give up.  I seek better things, but I don’t settle.

Ah, my father.  After I put my son to bed, I rush to the phone and call Dad.  Busy.  I try again at 9:30.  Busy.  9:45.  Busy.  Fine.  I sent him an email.  I apologized for being tardy, but I remind him that I did think of him and wished him well.  I didn’t tell him of the flashback, though.  I could have, but chose not to.  It was the final days before the move that shook my world and I am certain he needed not be reminded.

Dear ol’ Dad.  He is an odd sort.  He’s a retired doctor, a General Practitioner, or your basic go-every-six-months kind of general medicine doctor.  He honed his skills in his profession through the Navy.  I think he would have stayed, but once his term of service expired shortly after the Cuban Missile Crisis (he was a Naval doctor in, I believe, Beaufort, but his entire base was activated for the crisis), he was done.  He already had three young children, from infant to toddler, so he was done.  He moved to Newark, DE after that, on a lead from a former Navy colleague who was part of an established practice.  Up he came.  It’s his Naval background that I highlight, because it is there he completely honed his skill of turning off his emotions to humanity.  It was no trait, let me tell you, but a learned skill.

My dad.  Fast forward 25-or-so years and good ol’ RSmitty is upon his High School graduation (no, I wasn’t part of the three children above, I didn’t come around until eight years after them) from Mount Pleasant.  I was the last of five and my Dad was elated.  Not only a milestone in my life, but his as well.  He had a joy in him that I hadn’t see in years.  I remember not holding much bitterness against him over the divorce, but I can still remember my brain screaming, albeit silently, “Why?  Why did you need to disrupt everything?”  Ah, smiling and silence.  It’s what a good son does with his only father.

Dad and my college years.  Youch.  I was a partier, to the hilt.  My grades suffered.  One thing I did, though, was play sports any which way I could.  I was good at baseball.  I played summer games and was good.  I tried to walk on at UD.  I can’t remember too much, other than I wasn’t asked to leave first and I was there a good balance of the day.  I didn’t make it, but I felt I came close, too close.  For the first time in college, I felt determined and focused.  I was going to work myself into the ground to turn that around the next year.  Just so happens, my father asked me to dinner the next night.

Dad and “the dinner.”  You asked me what was going on at school.  You picked up on my “trends.”  Fair enough.  I told you, because one thing I can’t do is hide things.  I don’t do lying all that well and I, frankly, am happy for that.  You were disappointed, but I didn’t argue – I understood why.  I also told you of my plan to make it to baseball.  You laughed.  You put down your fork and you laughed.  I am writing about this twenty years after that fact.  What happened to all that ability, that skill, to switch the emotions off?  You laughed…at me.  Talk about disappointed.

Then, you cut me off.

Dad, wherefore art thou?  Three years later, I sent you a letter with an offer to reimburse you for the wasted college expense.  I didn’t have it, but I had a plan.  I had some now, but worked it out that I would pay you 25% of each of my pay for x-number of years.  I wanted my father back, damn it!

Dad’s response.  I got a phone call…from my step-mother.  I was annoyed it wasn’t you.  Turns out you were out of town on a Doctor Continuing Ed Seminar.  OK, fine.  She had opened the letter and read it.  She called to see that I was alright and discussed, quite frankly, why you both did what you did.  Fine, I get it.  Doesn’t mean I agree or am satisfied, but I understood.  She, then told me not to worry about paying anything back, but just worry about moving forward.  Very tense conversation and very terse, but constructive.  I told her to have you call.  Three days later, you called.  You were at work, away from home.  It was after hours for you, so you were alone.  Never could I recall a time in my life up to that point where I heard you say, “I’m sorry.”  Yet, there you were, on the other side of that phone, and you said it.  It was terse, yes, but you said it and it echoed with me.  It was a good reconciling conversation.  My father was back, yet I was still bothered and you picked up on it and asked.  Remember that night three years ago when you laughed, while we were at dinner?  You don’t?  Well I do.

Father and son, like salt and pepper: we’re certainly a pair, but we don’t always go along together.  Many years passed and my adult life was in full swing.  We barely spoke.  You had your practice and I was too involved in my struggle to make it on my own, still without my college degree.  Working as a retail manager with Happy Harry’s and getting by.

DAD!  Then the turning point!  Smitty!  Your dad’s in the hospital!  It’s his heart!  Down I went.  Turns out not a heart attack as feared, but an aortic aneurysm.  Wouldn’t a heart attack be easier?  Heart surgery.  Very sobering time, indeed.  A stent inserted and I forget what else to handle the aneurysm.  Then the visit I paid to you while in the hospital for those few days after.  You asked me to your side and held my hand.  You held my (then) 34-or-something-year-old hand, something you did not do since I was nine or ten.  You looked at me and you cried.  You admitted through all that Naval training to flip off your emotions that you didn’t want to, nor were ready to die.  You admitted that you blew your time as a Dad, but especially to me, having left your nine-or-ten-year-old with a single mother who scraped to regain her nursing certification so she could work.  You apologized and tried to hug me, but all those damed tubes and wires.  Instead you clenched your hand on mine and squeezed so tight.  If it weren’t for the delivery of flowers interrupting the moment, I have no idea how long it would have lasted.  At the hospital, it was fleeting, but with me, we’re still clenching hands in that room.

Dad – different body, same man.  A lot has changed since then.  Not with the warm and beautiful man I have learned about over the last six years (albeit in our typical, male Smitty once-in-a-while fashion), but a lot in the person my eyes physically see.  You and your brothers have outlived all the male Smittys in our lineage in terms of decades.  That isn’t lost on me and may very well be part of my motivation, but so is that moment at your hospital bed.  My eyes see a man who shows time has had its way, but my emotions see a man that I have known for 40 years, but have REALLY just started to know over the last six.

Dad, I don’t know how much time you and I have and it crushes me that our male-Smitty trait of passiveness, when it comes to relations, is so dominant.  Do know, though, that I was thinking of you this Father’s Day and in a way that was totally unexpected, but so powerful.  I know you will take solace, though, that time slipped by because it was all about spending the day with my children and my wife.  I don’t even have to justify, I know now that you are good with that.

Oh, and Dad?  As I think back to that night when you last carried me up the stairs and put me into bed, I need to tell you one last and very important thing while we have the chance together.  Remember that dinner out that one night?  I forgive you, I absolutely forgive you.  I love you and your littlest boy is never letting go of your hand.

Tags: Dads, Father Son, Father's Day, Fathers, Peter Gabriel