ok, in my first entry, i promised very little sap on this site. however, this entry could potentially get a little sappy. i haven't really planned this entry out and it will evolve in a stream-of-consciousness sort of way, but my sap sense is tingling.
just over a month ago, my dad came to visit so that he and i could build a wooden deck in my backyard. i'm not very "handy" like that, but he is extremely so, and i bribed him with room, board, and a chance to visit his grandson. here's what our project looked like:
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my parents divorced when i was six (or maybe seven - i don't remember what month) and therefore my dad and i haven't had an extremely close relationship. it wasn't not close either, just not the same as it would have been had i grown up under the same roof as he.
at first, my sisters and i spent every saturday night at my dad's apartment. he had a pool table and a tv in the living room and a love seat in the little dining area. other than some bedroom furniture, that was it. we ate on the living room floor in front of the tv and watched things like hee-haw, the mandrell sisters' show, love boat, and fantasy island. we'd stay for a bit on sunday and then go back home. my parents had a fairly friendly divorce and things were always cordial.
prior to my parents' divorce, my dad was kind of distant with us. he worked a lot of hours and from my memory, was in a bad mood a lot. i never got the feeling that he didn't love us, but in my house, kids were better seen and not heard and we had to tread lightly around him at times. after the divorce, that started to change, as it commonly does. my dad shifted a bit into that "best friend" mode as he tried to play a bigger role in our lives. we went to some baseball games, we worked together on cub scout projects, played catch, went camping, etc. even though there were more activities, i still didn't feel as though i knew my dad very well and neither did he know me.
he got remarried along the way, and our visits to his place were now visits to his new home and life with his new wife. she was (and is) really good for him in my opinion. he mellowed quite a bit and together they pursued things that he might not have done on his own. they traveled, bought land in the middle of nowhere and built a house on it, and more recently, started attending church.
in fairness to my dad, i probably was not the easiest child to relate to. i always had my nose buried in a book and when i did talk, it was usually some weird-ass thing that i had been thinking about. i've never confirmed it, but it wouldn't surprise me if my dad and stepmom thought that i was either retarded or an alien.
as the years went on and my sisters and i got older, plans with friends sometimes superseded our saturday visits. eventually, we began visiting on sundays to watch football and dropped saturday night altogether. as i graduated college and eventually moved about an hour away, i saw him less and less. on average over the last few years, i probably saw my dad once or twice a year. our relationship is not strained in the least, although i still wouldn't say i know him inside and out, like i do my mother. in addition to loving him dearly, i genuinely like him as a person and am very grateful that my being from "a broken home", as he likes to say, has not hurt the way we relate now.
back to the present: i was definitely looking forward to his visit in october of this year. we hadn't slept under the same roof in probably fifteen years and hadn't been around each other for more than a few hours in six or eight. i took vacation on a wednesday through friday and he came down from oklahoma, where he now lives.
once he showed up, we went to work almost immediately. we capped sprinkler heads, mapped out the deck's dimensions, and headed off for our first of what seemed like thousands of visits to lowe's. it was a great few days. we'd work from 8:00 to 5:00, with a short lunch and lots of breaks that i made him take - he's 63 years old. we'd clean up and go out to dinner with my wife and son, and then come home and watch postseason baseball. we talked while we worked, never about anything too serious, just chit chat to fill the time. during our days and nights together, i caught myself noticing many times how similar we are. whether it was the way we positioned ourselves while watching tv, or the ideas we had about the deck, it was obvious that i was his son and it felt comforting to look across the room or the yard and see him there.
we finished up on a saturday afternoon and he had to get going. the days went by too quickly and i was more than a little sad to see him go. i feel like even though there were no heart-to-heart talks or Big Moments, i'm closer to him now than i've ever been. seeing him leave that afternoon made me realize just how much i've missed him in my life and also made me wonder how things would have been had my parents stayed together. but they didn't. and even though i didn't see him day in and day out like some kids do, i wouldn't trade our adult relationship for the world.
as an extra bonus, every time i look in my backyard now, i see a tangible representation of the four great days in october 2004 that my dad and i bonded through regular old lumber, concrete and screws. and even though one day i'll no longer live here or the wood will need to be replaced, the memory will stay with me.
love ya, dad. i hope i can be half as good a father to my own son as you have been to me.
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