Remembering Dad

Yesterday was Father's Day. I cooked for my boys and their families but Father's Day is really about thinking about or remembering your own father. My Dad was born in County Kerry, Ireland in 1891 into a family of eight children. The little village of Fahan was their birthplace. Mostly neighbors married neighbors because there were no automobiles and walking or riding donkey's was the only mode of transport. My father's father did marry someone from another town in Ireland and I wish I knew how that came about. My father emmigrated to America when he was 17 years old, fought in Europe in WWI and became a citizen for the privilege of risking his life in battle.

He married by mother when he was 31 and my mother was 21. My brother was born in 1930 and I was born eight years later in 1938.

My Dad was a very quiet man and I don't remember spending any one-on-one time with him until I was five years old. He had saved up his spending money (money was tight in those years during WWII) and took me by the hand and we walked downtown to a shoe store. He bought me a terrific pair of shoes I wanted and I walked proudly home in them. I was limping as we walked into the house and I showed my mother what Daddy had bought me.

My mother was mad because they were too small but I really really wanted them and told him that they were fine. I think I wore them only one more time because of course they made my feet hurt. When I was in my early teens he bought me a pink 78rpm record player, again with money that he had saved.

Times were different then, fathers went to work and mothers stayed home. There was no playing in the park, coaching baseball or swimming in the lake like fathers do now. Yet I never felt like I was deprived, I felt like I belonged to a family even though my father wasn't communicative, he presence was always there.

I think my mother wore the pants in the family. My Dad was just a very very quiet man except on Sundays in summer when he could be heard rooting for the Boston Red Sox as he listened to the games on the radio.

Even though I never knew the man underneath the dad, I miss him. I wish I had talked to him more, asked him more questions about his life in Ireland and how he met my mother and what he thought about while he sat quietly in his chair in the living room.