This one’s for my Pop

Too many moons ago, after graduating college I was hired as a technical writer for a research and development firm.  My dad was thought it was so cool that I was “a writer,” but I always thought he secretly wished I wrote articles for magazines…or a book like the mysteries he gobbled up so voraciously.

My dad passed a few weeks ago at 94 years and 11 months, and this will be my first Father’s Day without him.  I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I shed more than a few tears with my family while we’ve struggled through the last couple of months.  But truly, among the grief, there have been so many sweet stories shared, happy memories relived, and special moments remembered…that I wanted to put some of it down in a post…an “article” for, and about, my pop.

Look at this guy! Isn’t he cute?

He was born almost 95 years ago, the youngest of five children. 

Four of the five siblings served in the military (the middle child joined God’s army as a Sister of St. Joseph). At 17, my dad enlisted in the Marines and was stationed in San Francisco,

where he learned carpentry and building skills, and his eventual trade as a welder. He loved living in San Francisco and used to talk about going back to see it again…which never happened due to his extreme fear of flying.

After the service he came back to Buffalo to his mom’s house, where a nice older couple had just moved next door . Paul spied the couple’s pretty granddaughter working in the garden along the fence line…and she kept his attention for the next 70 years…

Three children later…

While we were growing up, my dad mostly worked second shift so we didn’t see him a lot during the week, but he really endeavored to make the most of the time he had with us. Family was super important to him.

On our birthdays, we would wake up to his hand-made garland, strung with sheets of graph paper–an individual block letter drawn and colored with crayon filled the whole of each sheet–to spell out HAPPY BIRTHDAY PAUL (or JIM or MARY).

I remember one day he took me for a walk and we ended up at a neighborhood Western Auto store. When we came home, my mom was surprised to see me riding a new beautiful, royal blue, two-wheeled bike with streamers in the handle grips. I remember being SOOO excited…but I also remember being struck by how happy taking me for that bike seemed to make him.

If I was lucky, the school bus would deliver me home in time to have a few minutes with him before he left for work. And on hot summer days, I would wait up until he came home and we would go for a “midnight swim” and talk while we floated and cooled off in the backyard pool.

In his younger days, my dad and his friends liked to go roller skating. Pop loved to skate and I’m fairly sure that was somehow the genesis for our whole family taking lessons for years.

On Sundays in the summer he would pile us in the car and we would venture across the border into Canada to skate in the Crystal Ballroom at the Crystal Beach Amusement Park. Once the largest ballroom in North America, my parents would go there to dance to live orchestras back in the day. For me, it was a huge and wonderful place to roller skate…and if we finished early enough, we would get to hop on a ride or two before the park closed.

My dad also took us camping a lot and he would even sometimes commute to work from the campground.  We had so many fun adventures boating and fishing, swimming in lakes, and sitting around campfires.  

Whether building a garage, home addition or birdhouse, Dad was precise about details and doing things the “right way.” He was a very skilled and meticulous tradesman and craftsman.

He could walk into a room and his eye always knew if something wasn’t level. My brother noted, quite importantly, that my dad was also a teacher at heart and always endeavored to share his skills and explain how things worked. I wish I had been interested in those things when I had the chance to learn them from him. (If I said that to him today, he would probably laugh and call me “Little Mary Bullshit.”)

Our dad loved and had an eclectic palate for all kinds of music, from Johnny Cash to The Bee Gees; Frank Sinatra to Supertramp; The Eagles to Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops.  You never knew what he would be playing on any given day: Folsom Prison Blues,  Stars and Stripes Forever, Uncle Albert or All I Ask of You.  On the weekends, he cranked up the Magnavox and whatever it offered, he truly enjoyed it.

You could hardly talk about my Dad without talking about his Patsy, the woman who brought him his napkins and made him his sandwiches for the last 70 years.  Although she has been known to gripe about it for an occasional moment or two, Mom has truly been a hero and lived her marriage vows to the fullest. 

My dad’s most often repeated advice was that, if in your marriage you each always gave 60 percent, you’d always have 20 percent left over.

I wouldn’t want to shortchange their time together by describing it as something out of a fairytale…because fairytales don’t spend any time taking about the gritty work of true commitment, overlooking faults, forgiving mistakes, and offering encouragement, compromises, patience, respect, sacrifice and lots of love.  

Over their 70 years together, our parents wove all those things—both rough, smooth, and fine threads—into a fabric that really binds together what love, marriage, and family actually entails.

I will always think of them in our house on Tussing Lane…both of them going about their business on any given weekend.  The Magnavox might be playing some type of “Strangers in the Night” tune…and when they happened to spontaneously cross paths, Pops would grab Mom’s hand and they would dance, right then and there.  That’s a movie I will happily play in my head forever.

You wouldn’t call my dad the life of the party, but he always enjoyed one. At family holidays he would be in the remotest spot of the room, watching everything, taking in all the chaos, and enjoying it without having to be at the center of it all.

The day I left home was the actual day Mr and I were married. (Prior to that, a nine-day trip with my high school French club was the longest I had ever been away from my family.) Although I was very excited to marry the love of my life, I also spent the preceding week bawling my eyes out about leaving home. As I was going to bed the night before the wedding, my dad came in to “tuck me in” one last time. He half-jokingly said, “tomorrow is a big day, and I know you’re sad to leave, but you don’t want to spend tomorrow–of all days–crying about it. Plus we’re spending a lot of money on this and I don’t want you to look bad in all the pictures. So, enjoy tomorrow, and go back to crying the next day.”

Just as we were about to start down the aisle and I started to lose it, he leaned over to me and joked, “Remember, you don’t look like crap in the pictures…” And off we went.

It wasn’t until we received our video months later that I saw my pop had given me away, went back to his pew in the church, and bawled HIS eyes out for the rest of the Mass.

I never for a minute wondered if my dad loved me or was proud of me. He told me regularly, but he also made that very clear with his interest in everything we said or did. His eyes showed every emotion by the way he looked at you; he listened intently to our stories, and he laughed and smiled at all the right times when we talked.  Those eyes though…for a quiet guy, they spoke volumes. 

One last story, for anyone still with me…My dad LOVED all things space and astronomy. 

Pop always knew when there would be Leonids or Persieds, or when a planet was visible, or there was a special moon.  And he loved to chat about it with any family member that shared his interest.

One of the last times my daughter, Claire, saw her Papa, she noted that he said goodbye to her in an unusual and special way…and I am going to borrow it now …for him.

Goodnight, Papa.  We’ll keep you forever in our hearts, and… we’ll “see you in the stars”.

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I’ve been MIA since February, just a little before the wheels fell off too many wagons in my life. My last “Where Bloggers Live” post was about Valentine’s Day.  

So, I sort of sandbagged you all with this post…which was supposed to detail “Five Things I Love About Summer,” although you can find an answer to that prompt here.

If you’re still reading this…THANK YOU! And for more immediate uplifting content, kindly visit my VERY kind and supportive friends:

Daenel at Living Outside the Stacks
Leslie at Once Upon a Time & Happily Ever After
Sally at Within a World of My Own  
Iris at Iris’ Original Ramblings
Bettye at Fashion Schlub
Jodie at Jodie’s Touch of Style