Happy Father's Day.

I don't remember the exact date that I learned my father had adopted my oldest brother. I'm not sure how old I was that day at the dinner table when he told Ken and me that Doug had come as part of the package when my father asked my mother to marry him. Now when I look back on it, I have one of those "I coulda had a V-8" moments as I remember looking at pictures of Steve's and Eleanor's wedding. There is Doug in his little suit, looking every bit the part of the little man at the big party. Ken and I used to express envy that Doug was so lucky because he got to be at the wedding when we couldn't. Why was that, we wondered?

It was because my father welcomed his new son as if the boy had come fully formed out of thin air just for him. The amount of love required to adopt a child is something not many people possess. Take that, and multiply it time and uncountable time again and you may arrive at the capacity for love needed to treat that adopted child exactly as your own.

This defines my father. He never, ever made a distinction between "his own" and another. Doug was his own, and he would always and forever be his own because one day four-and-a-half decades ago he walked out of a judge's chambers with a brand new son and brought him home. And be aware that this happened long ago, in a much less welcoming time. This supposedly simple act took not only love, but courage.

So by blood, Doug, Ken and I share a mother. By choice, we share a father. That difference never made a difference to my family. This is the great gift my father bestowed upon us all. I realize after all these years that his example was the lesson of how to love.

We lost our father sixteen years ago to cancer. No matter what people may say, one never really gets over losing a parent. I was twenty-eight and already had a family of my own, but there has been something missing these past years. The large space that my father inhabited has remained empty and we miss him. My daughter loves to talk about my father, but I can tell that she is having a harder time picturing him. She was six when he died and largely remembers him as being sick, although one of her most precious possessions is a picture of the two of them walking tiny hand in big hand alongside the road that ran past my family's house.

That house is gone from us now, too, as Doug and his family have welcomed my mother to her new home.

Recently, my mother paid us a visit armed with pictures from my niece's wedding. The most poignant among them was one of Doug dancing with his daughter, looking more vulnerable than I have ever seen him. In his face I saw the face of my father, full with care and comfort and the trials of fatherhood. I won't presume to speak for Doug, of course, but I think that his life would have been very different if Steven hadn't entered it. It goes without saying that not everything was perfect or sometimes even just passable. There were many, sometimes bitter, conflicts and my father had his own fears and prejudices just like any other man with sons growing up and out and making their own decisions. Let that be for another time. What I want to do today is remember the man who made men from boys and taught them to love each other not by self-conscious edict, but by quiet example.

So on this--let's face it--holiday manufactured for the golf and power tolls industries, I'll take the opportunity to think about a few things that often go unthunk. I won't say much, because I'm a much better writer than a speaker, which should indicate just how poor a speaker I am. But I will say this: Thanks, Dad, for my family.

Happy Father's Day, Steven. Happy Father's Day, Doug.

Comments

[Older Bro]

I'm not sure if I had a harder or easier time dealing with Dad's death because of the time I spent with him and Mom. As an FYI to Dan's readers, while he and his family were living in Pittsburgh and Doug and his family were in Florida, I moved back home during Dad's last two years. I had decided (after a suggestion by Dan) to go back to school to get a degree in Technical Writing. I can't remember which came first, my decision or Dad's diagnosis, but California University (that's California, PA, folks) had a Technical Writing program, so I was able to move home, go back to school, and help out around the home.

It also meant that as Dad went out of remission and got worse, I was there every day. Doug once told be that, it an odd way, he was a little envious of my situation, because I was there and was able to share that time with both Mom and Dad. I still remember his last day, ever, in the house he was born in, his body so wracked with pain that he couldn't move and Mom and I had to lay him down in a doorway until the ambulance arrived.

But even before that, I think I still had more contact with them. For all purposes, I still had a room there. I spent every holiday there, not just the day but the entire weekend. I basically moved in the last two weeks of the year, spending Christmas and New Years with them. It was a pattern I continued when I moved to NJ. I had time to talk with them before and more with Mom after, I had time to relate with them not only as parent/child, but as adults.

During the rehearsal for Nikki's wedding, looking around her in-laws yard where the wedding was going to take place, and I turned and I expected to see Dad. He would have loved it And then during the reception, I looked at Mom and then I saw Doug dancing with Nikki and I realized he was there.

[Mom]

Thanks for a GOOD cry on this day, when all my sons are in my heart and mind-if not in my sight!

[Robert Mayer]

You're old, sir.

Just a friendly reminder :)