Yesterday was Father's Day. I know that probably everyone in the free world knows this, but since I am the type of person who has been known to forget her own birthday, this feels like an accomplishment that I knew of this ahead of time.
Matt and I spent the whole of last weekend in the north suburbs of Chicago visiting family, eating Chicago-style pizza, watching terrible movies in our hotel room and seeing Julia Hamlin become Julia Harrington. (She looked every bit as lovely as a bride could have looked, by the way)
Before we hauled ourselves back downstate, we dropped in to see Nancy and Andy at the house and handed over his Father's Day present (divine chocolates from here).
Today, I get to stop, take a breath, and remember why Dads deserve Father's Day.
My own Dad passed away when I was a kid, but I still remember a lot about him.
Things I remember about my Dad from growing up:
He was almost always lighthearted and smiling, with a big grin on his face, a twinkle in his eye and joke just on the tip of his tongue. He loved to laugh. He took his coffee black and scalding hot. He was a Cubs fan. His favorite player was Darryl Strawberry. The first thing he would do when he came home from work everyday is throw me up into the air, catch me, then nuzzle his 5 o'clock shadow on my face. He taught me how to swim in the ocean, how to ride my bike, how to play stick ball, how to say 'sorry' to mom, and how to feel safe, warm and loved.
A great memory:
Dad launching me high into the air on his shoulders when we played in the pool. And how he would declare "Nestee plunge!" and everyone, including himself, would fall backward into the pool and make a great tidal wave rise up in the center of it.
Things about me that I get from Dad:
No matter how hard something got, he was never ever going to give up trying. I'm not sure I have that much optimism, but that specific kind of stubbornness I have is definitely from him! That, and how I pack the car like it's a Tetris game.
For Matt, I definitely see that he gets a lot of his looks from Andy (doppleganger, anyone?), his purposeful mispronunciation/misappropriation of common words and phrases ("Dance to the beat of your own kazoo"), his love of all things strange and unusual, half of his musical talent, his affinity for techy stuff and computers, his ability to take quotes from movies/online/youtube/tv series and make his own secret language, his desire to 'tinker' with stuff, and his strange taste in music.
I remember several years ago now, when the family came to visit Matt and I in our first apartment and Matt and Andy were standing in our kitchen. I was dumbstruck by how similar their mannerisms were, their manner of speaking, the words they chose. Matt is his own man, but I can definitely tell where half of his DNA comes from. And it is wonderful.
Thank you to the Dads, past, present, and future.
With love and laughter,
Ashley
