To All The Ordinary Dads

 My father was extraordinary, but only in hindsight. As an only child, and having lost his own father the week before my dad graduated from college, having his own children was especially meaningful for him. 

I don't have a photographic memory--quite the opposite. It's probably why I write so much, because I can't remember anything. My childhood is a series of snapshots, vignettes of moments. I idolized my father, and we were close. Most of those memories with my dad growing up, however, are ordinary ones. 

There was the time when I was around eight years old; he had just sealed the driveway at the house we grew up in, and pretended to be stuck to the tar, yelling for me for help. I still remember when I jumped out of our big blue Chevy van and ran over to pull him out, and he feigned relief and made me feel like a hero. 

When I was thirteen or so, we set off together to bike from Eastham to Provincetown, Massachusetts while on vacation. I was nervous--it was about fifty miles round trip, and I only had a Kmart mountain bike and my dad a Panasonic 10-speed. But he had confidence we could make it. When we made it to the tip of the Cape, we bought donuts and sat on a bench overlooking the ocean.

After I graduated high school and set off to hike the Appalachain Trail, I remember calling him from a payphone at a lonely general store in New York state; I wanted to come home. When he pulled up a few hours later, I'll never forget the hug he gave me; I didn't need to say a word.

There were times I pushed him away, too. In my early twenties, when he came to visit me in a rough part of Harrisburg where I was living and running a house of hospitality for men in recovery, I lectured him on the the realities of poverty and inner-city living. He listened quietly, nodded his head and let me talk. I knew everything, after all. 

When I introduced him and my mom to the woman who was to become my wife, he took me aside and bought me a cup of coffee and we sat outside a bakery on Germantown Avenue in Mount Airy. When I asked him how you know you've met "the one," he said "you'll know it's her when you are more yourself around her than with anyone else."

I could always be myself with my father. I could confide in him, and he encouraged that. He wasn't distant, and took an active role in the lives of my brothers and I. I felt like he entrusted a special trust and responsibility to me as well because I was the oldest, which could feel onerous at times. Even now, as my parents are aging, I know most of the responsibility for caring for them will fall to me. 

My dad was extraordinary in how he loved us unconditionally, sacrificed everything for our sakes, and taught us how to go through life. He wasn't without his flaws and shortcomings. But when I think back on growing up with a father, it was very much in the ordinary moments and snapshots of memories I retained that formed my mental portrait of him. Now that I have my own kids, I find myself conscious of that privilege and working from the model I had growing up that my father gave me. 

As a good buddy and father of eight told me, "Ninety percent of life is just showing up." For all the new fathers, and those with a few years under their belt--you don't have to do big things, heroic things, novel or spectacular things. Sometimes it's just about showing up. And I'll let you in on a little secret: there's no "World's Best Dad" contest to have to compete in. Most of what your kids are going to remember about you are going to be these little snapshots of moments, the everyday instances they'll catalog for years and reference later where you made the decision to step in and show up. It's the one place in life in which an otherwise ordinary dad can grow to be an extraordinary man.