My sister, Elisabeth, said it best when she declared, “My Daddy stole fire from the sun!” My other sister, Barbara, and I agree completely. Our first and best hero ever is Dad, and today is his 60th birthday.
There are some things Dad taught me for which I am grateful. For one, Dad taught me to have a very healthy and generous amount of disrespect for authority. Lots of people talk about not trusting government or big business as a theory; for me, though, it is a tenet that these entities must be warily monitored at all times. In fact, I stopped supporting the death penalty – not because of the exhortations of Pope John Paul II (I was very very sad that I disagreed with him) – but because, in 2000, columnist George Will successfully argued (to me) that government by its very nature was incapable of making an error-free judgment, and, in the case of capital punishment where you can’t ever assign monetary reparation in the event of a mistake, it was grossly unfair to allow someone to be executed by mistake.
As a teenager, my Mom would often muse that perhaps my blondish hair and blue eyes might have spared my life in Nazi Germany (we’re not German, she was just using this as an example), but surely my lack of respect for authority would have had my head on the chopping block. Since I’d have much rather died than collaborated with that regime, I would have had my Dad to sincerely thank for my premature death.
But Dad is pretty clever, and I’d like to think he taught me a thing or two about not getting caught. Perhaps, had I lived in Nazi Germany, I might have done much good (if I could have managed to keep my mouth shut). “If you ain’t cheatin’, you ain’t tryin’, ” is one thing my Dad always said. I think he must have driven my poor Mom nuts. I cheated once in the 5th grade, and I didn’t get caught, but my cohorts did. I never ever cheated again, and if I had, I think my Dad would have been really disappointed in me. Dad’s lesson wasn’t so much that one should cheat to get through life, but that sometimes you have to do what you have to do regardless of the rules. And sometimes, it is better to not be overt about not following the rules. Those who publicly ranted about the Nazis found themselves in Dachau; those who were quietly opposed sheltered Jews and saved their lives.
My Dad also taught me everything I know about courage, loyalty, and standing by my convictions all the time. When my friends got caught cheating and I didn’t, I stepped forward and confessed my role (Dad’s probably cringing over that: I think men have a different code whereby the fewest number of guilty parties hang as possible and the others chastise them for getting caught and commend them for not ratting the others out). My teacher was so overwhelmed by my actions, she (female teacher of course, I doubt this would have worked with a male teacher) wagged her finger and told us to go and sin no more.
Perhaps Dad would have behaved differently in that situation, but it is his behavior in other smaller things that is reflected in my loyalty to my friends that day. I have never in thirty-five years heard my Dad issue an oath stronger than “Jiminy-Christmas!” or “Criminy!” Dad was in the Air Force, and he was a para-rescueman. He has stories about bar-fights. I can’t imagine that he didn’t curse when he was a younger man. But at some point, perhaps when he became a Dad, he must have decided that swearing was inappropriate, and he stopped. Forever. If it’s wrong, it’s wrong all the time.
Dad isn’t Catholic, but he vowed to raise his children Catholic. By golly, he stuck to that vow. Never in my teen years could I get him to agree with me that the Church was wrong about some point. That would have been counter to his vow.
When I went off to college, Dad started going to Mass regularly. Years later, I observed him abstaining from meat on Fridays and giving up things for Lent. At some point, he told me he believed in the Real Presence. I just couldn’t understand why he didn’t convert, except that perhaps he felt that Catholic rituals were optional unless he converted, and then they would be mandatory. Dad is finally going through RCIA now, and will receive the sacraments in April. I fully expect to find my own observation of the Catholic faith challenged for the better as he strives to follow the faith he vows to follow, and I see my own shortcomings in the shadow of his commitment.
But the greatest thing my Dad ever taught me was about love and respect. The more dysfunctional people I meet, and the more functional people from dysfunctional families I know, the more I become aware how lucky I am to have had a mother and a father married and raising their family together. I’m not saying Dad is the perfect dad or the perfect husband, but he honors and respects my mother, and his behavior toward her and the tone he set in our house growing up has been the benchmark by which I have judged my own husband and home life. It’s hard, sometimes, for my husband to compete against the man who stole fire from the sun, but he’ll be judged by our daughters, not by me.
Happy birthday, Dad. I love you.
Reit This Way 