Dear Old Dad

He was the best Dad. He was never the worst. Even when he said, “If I hear one more peep out of you, you will get a spanking when we get home.” And I peeped. How could I not?

Even when we left the University of Minnesota Band concert and from the moment we got into the concrete stairway, I said I had to go potty. “But the doors are locked and we can’t get back in,” he said. “You will have to hold it.” The drive home took an hour. I made it to our driveway. Mommy made Daddy clean the car. I forgave him all of that. How could I not?

He championed me when I sang alto in the choir. I watched his eyes fill with tears as he sat in the audience, loving me with all his heart. We sang in Norwegian. Was he missing days long gone?

I was initiated into school pep club for our team the Warriors. I did as instructed, danced around our grassy front yard while pounding on a drum. Dusk settled around me. I increased my frantic pace, determined to impress the mysterious Senior making me do silly things. Dad held the space, hoping I wouldn’t be disappointed, squeezing me tight when my Big Sister turned out to be the Biggest Nerd in the senior class.

Daddy and I crossed our eyes on cue. “Don’t we look alike,” he would ask his buddy Doug, resting his arm around my shoulder. We always grinned like maniacs.

He had a spring in his step and a grin from ear to ear. He was elegant and lanky. Twenty-five years older than me, curious, playful, he could schotische my mother around the dance floor like popping corn.

Every night at 5pm, he returned from work, opened the porch door and gave a three note whistle. My brother, sister and I immediately ran from wherever we were in the house to watch him meet Mommy in front of the fridge and kiss her. Only then would he hug my siblings and me.

I didn’t discover Daddy’s contradictions until the Vietnam War entered my consciousness. It was the early 70s and reality was breaking across America. My generation was not the Greatest Generation, but the Used and Abused Generation, dying for …what? “Your Dad mak s genocide bombs,” a friend said. Daddy was an engineer at Ordinance. He designed weapons, including cluster bombs.

“How can you do that?” I asked, point blank. “How can you design bombs that explode shrapnel into children?”

Deep pain shadowed his face. “Someone will do it,” he said. “I figure if I design these bombs as best I can, they will explode as intended, and stop more killing.”

Saturday night, I watched Oppenheimer confront his massive, moral dilemma. Heard his rationale that dropping the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki would end war forever.

My Daddy attended the Lutheran Church his entire life: every Sunday every Sunday every Sunday, without fail. He cried when he received a telephone call asking him to be President of the Congregation. He never cried.

Dad insisted on paying full price for my brother’s ski ticket the day he became an adult. “But Dad, they don’t check I.D.,” my brother protested. “We are not cheaters,” Dad said.

The good die young, Dad included. He fell over backwards while dancing with my mother at Dance Club, age 60. Over 700 people attended his service. Honeywell had to hire a traffic director to move attending engineers through the parking lot.

I delivered the eulogy and at our church reception, a stranger asked, “I am surprised you didn’t mention your Dad’s invaluable work on the Apollo stick shift. Without your Dad’s reliable design as manual backup, Armstrong wouldn’t have landed on the moon.”

I stared at this man. All my life, Daddy had worked Top Secret Projects. “I didn’t mention it, because I didn’t know.”

“You didn’t know?”

“I did not.”

I felt very sad not to have shared the joy of Dad’s accomplishment with him. The fear, anxiety, pride he must have felt, when Armstrong switched to manual. Thanking this kind man for telling me, my heart filled and tears spilled.

My Daddy was the best Dad. He will have been gone 36 years in a couple weeks and I still miss him every day. How could I not?

Note: On March 27, 2024, Dad will have been gone from my life longer than he was in it.