DA

It’s hard writing pictures of people – especially when they’re still alive and can sue you – especially when it’s a parent who can disown or de-friend. The pressure’s really on when you decide to write about a parent whose daily bread is still earned by crafting words. You find yourself in a potential minefield – a nightmare where each punctuation mark, every mis-chosen word becomes an IED. There are not enough acid inhibitors in the world to cope with the ‘agita’ that accompanies such an assignment. You feel blessed that CaFleureBon is not on his regular blogroll to be checked.I

 

 

 

I’m told that I’m like him…that I become more like him as I age. It puzzles me. I don’t think we’re at all alike. It may be the limp, but more likely it’s the eyes and a certain look we share when human nature throws us for a loop. A co-worker calls it my ‘Dad look’.   I wrote this piece several months ago for a Boston celebration while the rest of us were celebrating Tax Day. It caused some comment for various reasons but it defines him better than anything else I could add. So – Here it is and if it’s true that his rather difficult children turned out like him…. well…color us honored

His idea of bonding when I was in grade school was to take me on Saturday mornings to a coffee shop where newspaper folk and politicians would gather. The smell of cigarettes, cigars, and black coffee were one with the paint. It was a time where a governor could stop by and say, “I’m thinking of __________. What do you all think?” And he’d be told in no uncertain terms.

 He was my first boss when I was in high school and ruined me for most subsequent supervisors with a constant reminder of who was really paying my salary and what I owed them – that taxpayers don’t care about my 40 hour work week or that I should be paid overtime. The expectations were high and the praise sparing – just a look or a “Nice job”..

 

 Donn and  Doris

He loves his country best who strives to make it best. ~Robert G. Ingersoll

He can trace his old military unit’s lineage back to the Revolutionary War and his personal lineage to 1630 with names like Underhill, De Revier, Goetschius, and Van Tassel – ministers, soldiers, upstarts, and firebrands.

He’s termed brilliant by his contemporaries and is the “institutional memory” of his adopted city and state. But for an accident of bad timing, he’d carry the term “native Delawarean”. Who knew the boy in the sailor suit would take such unpopular paths to make his corner of the world a better place?

  

He was a citizen soldier who would take us to watch his artillery battery practice. We would sit in some of the classes he taught for Officer Candidates. And we watched while he finished packing a duffel bag one night in anticipation of the world ending because of a place called Cuba. He explained all this as something that had to be done, not because of the people, but because of the leaders. We were never to feel ill will to the people.

He told me in a letter that somewhere in Russia another little girl’s father was doing the same thing for the same reason. I was to remember the Russian girl and not be scared.

 

Patriots are away from home a lot. They miss birthdays, broken bones, measles, and tonsils.In the days before computers, they’d call once a month for five minutes. Five minutes because there was always a line at the phone. The kids would get 30 seconds each. I don’t know what bigger families did.

A patriot wants, above all, peace so he wore his uniform for 30 years and belonged to Pacem in Terris. He sees no conflict in belonging to both the ACLU and the NRA – although the NRA’s lobbying tactics are starting to aggravate him. He believed that the institution of freedom for all was more than words so he went to Montgomery, Alabama, and if we suffered for it (and we did), it was for the greater good.

 He’s a man who will tell you he was named to an arts committee as the philistine representative, but he made money as a photographer and commissioned paintings for his own collection. He sings along to the standards only with encouragement and has learned to enjoy Matt Shipp’s style of jazz. He’s considered a poet because he wrote the last verse to a rather unsingable state song. (Aren’t they all?)

 

He’s a Son of the American Revolution who has a son serving and a grandson who will be commissioned upon graduation. The next generation of his family looks like the salad bowl of America. It’s as it should be. That was the point of the battle. They, too, will do things that incur the scorn and wrath of neighbors, friends, and, sometimes, family. It can’t be helped. It’s in the blood and born in the soul.

“The highest patriotism is not a blind acceptance of official policy, but a love of one's country deep enough to call her to a higher plain.” George McGovern

As we say in my family “It’s what we do.”

Happy Father’s Day, Da. We love you. M.E and Marty

–Mary Beth Devine, Editor

ART direction: Michelyn Camen and Mark Behnke

Do you have a characteristic or personality  trait that  reminds you of  your Father? Or just a message you would like to send to the "man who raised you", dad, grandfather, uncle….

From all of us at www.cafleurebon.com Happy's Father's Day!