I've never been much for heaven or hell. The whole concept eludes me. Why would a supreme being waste time with such massive operations, especially the later, when he or she has bigger fish to fry? Perhaps it's all farmed out to Hilton or maybe Hyatt? Whatever the case, if I ever do get to re-connect with my father in the great beyond, a big "THANK YOU" is due him. First of all for not killing me when I had it coming and secondly for trying--boy did he try--to impart some simple rules to live by that he knew would save me from learning everything the HARD way. Naturally I paid zero attention and got my degree from the school of hard knocks, cum laude.
Dad has been gone more than seventeen years but it is obvious to me that he grows smarter by the day and now...I'm listening.
Several years ago my younger brother, Steve, wrote a Father's Day column that featured his take on our Dad. Steve recently retired from the newspaper grind but, without bothering to ask his permission, I chose to reprise the piece right here as a Father's Day offering. It is twenty-two years old and frankly is still just as good as it was when he put it to paper. Besides, I'm the older brother and two-thousand miles away. Come and get me Copper!
Here it is:
Reflections: Sunday On The Deck With Dad
(Tuesday, June 26, 1990)
"There's a deranged duck in the pond," my dad informs me matter-of-factly.
It's Sunday afternoon. Father's Day. We are standing one story above the ground on the narrow deck of my parents' condo squinting out into the glary light. It is hot and breezy, the sky is a dizzying whirl of blue and cirrus clouds.
My dad, who is retired and has time on his hands, keeps a close watch on the ducks these days as they come and go in the small lake out beyond the manicured lawn behind the condo complex. He counts the ducklings ("Snapping turtles got most of them this year.") and enjoys what, to his admittedly inexpert eye, seems to be the vagaries of duck social life.
If there's a weird duck out there, I'm sure my dad knows about it. When he points out the wayward fowl in question--a lone duck, a diver, he says--I observe him for a while too. He, (or is it a she?) swims erratically around the lake avoiding the other ducks. My dad thinks that maybe it has lost its mate and is grief-stricken. Through binoculars, the duck looks to me to be young and scrawny and glassy-eyed, maybe a little disheveled ( a tuft of feathers is askew on its head). Dangerous, I think. A loner, a rebel. The John Hinckley or Travis Bickle of the duck world.
Hinckley Duck goes away eventually, paddling with a sudden purpose (off to buy a handgun?) toward a distant corner of the lake and out of sight. Our thoughts and conversation drift to other things.
I have been thinking a lot about the old man lately, and about the inexorability of genes. There was a rebellious time when I thought I had little in common with my dad, and I don't think he knew quite what to make of me. If there is one thing he can't stand in the world, it's a smart-aleck. "Stay away from that guy. He's a smart-aleck," was a warning I heard repeatedly as a kid.
Dad is your basic solid-citizen--a patient, portly Ward Cleaver type interested in insurance, real estate, the crops, golf, washing the car, moderation and fairness. He is cursed, however, with two kids who are Eddie Haskells. Classic smart-alecks. My brother is a big city DJ, I'm a small town newspaper drone--jobs for un-solid citizens--two businesses fraught with cynics, burnouts, booze-hounds and other unsavory characters. At one point, I think my dad dreamed that I could be a golf pro. He bought me golf clubs and got me started playing when I was little. I was pretty good and he kept encouraging me. Of course I gave it up in high school.
I was a brooding, solitary, wiseacre kid and I've become a brooding, semi-solitary, wiseacre adult. Lately though, in the mornings before I have had time to activate my arsenal of self-delusions, I am often startled by the slightly puffy countenance returning my myopic gaze in the mirror. "Dad", I think. Time and circumstance (and booze) work their magic on a face, but genes will out. I notice, too, I am taking new pleasure in things like washing the car and mowing the yard, Perhaps moderation and a resumption of my golf career are next.
Dad has gotten jolly in retirement, though, to be honest, the last few years have not been especially kind to him. A man who, as I recall, was never sick a day in his life had barely said goodbye to the everyday work grind when he was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, then diabetes. He developed an ulcer, needed back surgery, spent the better part of a winter in the hospital or flat on his back at home.
My family is small but not what I imagine most people would consider particularly close-knit. Much is left unsaid between us. We share, rightly or wrongly, a distrust of anybody who talks too openly about his feelings, and a sense that life's important stuff, its essential truths, are ineffable. Maybe it's the Midwestern reticence, but I never heard my dad complain through any of his troubles. (He will be embarrassed, of course, that I'm committing any of this to paper.)
I think he's having a good year this year, I'm happy to say. He's able to golf again. His White Sox are winning (he's a life-long fan; naturally, to be contrary, I became a Cubs fan). Most of all, he seems comfortable with himself--untortured by regret--which, I imagine, must be the best part of growing old.
He's done OK.
When it's time to leave, my dad walks out to the parking lot to see me off. Night has begun to crouch down around the lake and the white brick condos. My folks decided to move to this place when the house got to be too much for them to care for, and I sense they are just now starting to feel at home here. It still seems foreign to me. We stand by the car for a moment as the insects whir incessantly from the shimmering trees. He notes with some pride that I am keeping my car clean.
"Happy Father's Day. And thanks," I say for a final time and we shake hands this Sunday, Father's Day. "Another day long gone," he says to me cheerfully. And in my head on the quiet drive home my father's voice echoes back to me as my own.
(Steve Copper is a wire editor for the Journal Courier. He also writes about the movies. As far as we know, the deranged duck remains at large.)
