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Cheers to dear old
When I was a kid there was a calendar in the kitchen. When I was old enough to read and understand what a calendar was, I made sure to check it every day. Mom wrote things in those wee squares to remind her of swimming lessons, birthdays, Holy Days, holidays and meetings like CWL, Brownies and Cubs. Mom, for many years, was a stay-at-home mom. Now I think the calendar helped her remember it was Wednesday not Friday and which of the seven of us were celebrating something. I’m not sure she would have been impressed with the virtual calendars we all use. The only person who ever wrote on the kitchen calendar was Mom, and each evening after the dinner dishes were done and put away she’d take a pencil out of the “junk drawer” and put a big X through the day. It was Mom’s kitchen calendar that made me aware of those extra special days like Mother’s Day and Father’s Day and Dominion Day.
While Mother’s Day was a pretty big deal, our mom didn’t really get much of a break on any of the Mother’s Days in the 1950s. Oh, she got bouquets of coneflowers, clover or dandelions, lots of handmade cards and sometimes (if our oldest sister went into town to shop) a bottle of Evening in Paris, but Mom was still on-the-hook for the meal preparations, supervising the bed making, feeding the “rabbits” and the dog and getting all of us turned out for the Mother’s Day mass at Church. Mom was the enforcer of the rules. Dad was not. Dad was a “wait till your father gets home” guy. None of us took that threat very seriously, though. By the time Dad got home Mom would have forgotten about our transgressions. However, Dad could be counted on to try to make one, or all, of us laugh at Church, usually in the middle of the Dominus vobiscum, which Dad had translated into Dominic Go Frisk Them. As soon as we heard the words, we all giggled and Dad would pretend he had no hand in our behaviour. You see, Dad was often our inspiration for shenanigans. We aspired to be annoyingly funny, just like him. Mom would give him the “eye” whenever he started, especially at Church. While no couple is perfect, I’d have to say our parents were made for each other. Mom was Bud Abbott to Dad’s Lou Costello. Dad loved a good joke, usually a “dad joke”. Mom had to live with the fallout of Dad’s jokes, which often included a healthy dose of bathroom humour.
“Boss”, as LOML referred to Dad, was a hardworking guy. He helped raise a bunch of kids who were taught to be helpful. Most of us could mix cement, lay tiles, install drywall, tape, mud and sand seams, patch a hole in an inner tube, remove and dry the distributor on the car, warm the engine up while he had his coffee, jumpstart the engine, straighten nails, putty a window, paint without leaving drips, measure twice and use a slide rule. Dad was the Mathmagician. Algebra, Geometry, Calculus and long division were simplified and sensible when he helped with homework. He could start a roaring bonfire even in a downpour and knew where to find the best wiener roasting sticks. By all accounts he was a “man’s man”, but it was Dear Old Dad who went shopping with me, picked out and paid for my graduation dress at Holt Renfrew of all places. Dad had impeccable fashion sense. It was Dad who went with me to pick out china, flatware and wedding invitations. It was Dear Old Dad who slipped me a few bucks when I graduated from the OMA programme (Pssst, don’t tell Mom).
June is the Merry Month of Dads and Dad-ish people who step up to parenting, are the cause of a parenting situation or fall face down into the parenting pile. I miss him every day. I think about him when I visit a lumber yard or hardware store or read poetry or hear the Eagles sing Hotel California. Cheers to my Dad.
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