June 18, 2006

• DadBlog!

  I have a wonderful dad. He's a retired elementary school principal,
  aged 69. He lives perhaps two-and-a-half hours' drive away from me with
  my mom, in the house I was raised in.

  They have had an active, busy, healthy retirement. My dad loves
  carpentry and photography, and they are both hugely into keeping
  tropical fish. In fact, they are somewhat famous for their success in
  breeding certain difficult or rare types of fish. Their house still
  contains dozens of fish tanks, both upstairs and down, although they
  have reduced the number a bit recently, I notice. My mom's arthritis
  may be one reason for that.

  I didn't get along so well with my parents when I was living with them,
  sad to say. I was what they liked to call a "willful" child. Looking
  back, I think it was a combination of my own pig-headedness and my
  father's  restrictive discipline. He was one of a family of four
  boys, himself, and despite his vast experience with children in his
  career, it seems to me that he was utterly freaked out to have such an
  outspoken, strong-minded girl child. He lectured endlessly and tried to
  keep me under lock and key. I felt that he didn't value my positive
  qualities or trust me to make responsible decisions. We just couldn't
  see eye to eye on anything. I'm sure many of you will understand what
  I'm talking about here.

  Since I reunited with my highschool sweetie, though, a very warm,
  loving relationship has grown up between me and my parents. I value
  this relationship so much. It would be hard for me to describe how
  relieved and happy I am that things have improved so much. I'm sure
  part of the credit is due to my new husband. They adore him and he
  thinks the world of them, so it’s a great atmosphere. (My last partner thought of parents as a species of inconvenience.) My husband's father was a drunkard who died when Dave was twelve, so he loves to say, "Hi Dad!" to mine.

  A couple of years ago, when my dad noticed that we had no coffee table
  in our living room, he decided to make one for us. Now, I always knew,
  in the back of my mind, that my dad is a terrific woodworker, but
  believe me, I had NO IDEA. I sent him a few photos from the Internet of
  the kind of thing I wanted. Since my home is vintage 1950, I wanted a
  nice clean retro Danish look. I sent him pictures like this one:

  

  And he drove over one day with THIS, swathed in old blankets:

  

  

  

  Holy moly! I never saw anything so lovely, even in a furniture
  showroom. The latticework on the second level there is incredible -- my
  mom described my dad on his knees in the workshop cutting all 400 lap
  joints by hand. He is an absolute perfectionist, and even he can't
  think of anything to fault in this table.

  He was over here yesterday and had a look at how his handiwork is faring
  (very well, I’m glad to say!). Every time I enter my living room I stop
  to adore this table. My husband says there's a lot of love in it, and
  he is so right. It looks even nicer since we had a splendid hardwood
  floor installed in the living room last fall.

  We are always looking for something to help my dad enjoy his workshop,
  and yesterday we got him an Arrow electric staple gun with boxes of
  every kind of staple and brad that it will fire. My mom says he's very
  pleased with it, since his old one was a laborious manual lever affair.

  
  
  
  A Happy Father's Day to all the dads, including mine!

  • 2:49 pm
  • 24 Comments