One week ago today I was driving home from Cedar City. At 1:30 in the morning I'd received a text message from my mother indicating that the paramedics were at their house and that my dad was headed to the hospital. He'd been throwing up blood. The fact that I'd awoken to the text message was unusual, but once I'd read the text I laid awake thinking about my dad.
One of my earliest childhood memories also involves my dad and paramedics. The setting was a softball diamond in Yerington, Nevada. I was two. My dad was playing softball and as he was sliding into base, his foot slipped under the bag and jammed into the buckle that anchored the base to the ground. His leg was shattered. Being two, I had no concept of what had happened, but I remember the flashing lights of the ambulance.
After he had recovered, my dad moved into new lines of work. He worked as a mechanic for a while, and then was employed by a heavy-equipment rental company. One of my favorite memories is riding up in a scissor lift and a boom lift. I'm sure it wasn't any higher than 20 feet up, but it seemed like a mile to me as a little boy.
Our family continued to grow, and my dad was always looking for ways to better provide for the family. He took a job doing seminars around the country. For two weeks every month he flew around the country speaking to groups of people. The BEST part of the job, though, at least from my perspective, was the souvenirs. T-shirts and key-chains and candy. I learned what a razorback pig was after he returned from Arkansas with a mug emblazened with a wild boar. I also found out that Virginia was for lovers.
LOVERS? WHAT?! I was probably about 7 years old. YOU CAN'T USE THAT WORD AROUND A 7 YEAR OLD! You certainly can't expect him to wear the t-shirt! Scarred for life.
By the way, I've been to Virginia since then. I was there with my wife. It was nice enough, but I didn't get the sense that we were any more attracted to each other than we were previously. Maybe we're doing the lovers (WHAT?!) thing wrong.
My dad always put his kids first. He grew up playing baseball and football, but my brothers and I found more interest on the soccer pitch. So my dad learned all about soccer. He learned about offenses and defenses (the WW holds a fond place in my heart even today) and became our coach. In Salt Lake, we played three of the four seasons. Rec and competitive soccer was played spring and fall and were relegated to the Salt Lake valley, but summer meant traveling team soccer. We went all over the state, seemingly every weekend. He never complained to us about the time commitment, he just did it.
My dad is a practical joker. One night he walked into the house holding his finger, writhing in pain. I looked over and saw a nail had gone THROUGH HIS FINGER! "Call the ambulance," he grunted. "WHAT? WHAT'S THEIR NUMBER?" I was in FULL PANIC MODE and he started laughing at me. How could he laugh? He had a nail (like a real nail--8 penny, I believe) through his finger. But there he was, laughing at me because I didn't know the number for 9-1-1. Finally, he revealed the secret--a little half-ring contraption that fit around his finger and made it look like there was a nail through his hand, but alas, it was just a CRUEL TRICK on an overly-sensitive young son.
As I became a teenager, my dad and I kind of grew apart. I blame myself. So does he. But really, teenagerhood seems to insist that you don't get along with your parents, and I certainly fell prey to that mandate. It didn't help that my brother just younger than me was a lot more like my dad and was probably just easier to like.
That sounds like I blame my brother. I don't. He really is a better man than me and always has been. I think I like him more than myself, so I can't really blame others for doing the same thing. And being a father, I understand that sometimes some of your kids are just plain easier to get along with at times than others are. I was definitely not easy to get along with.
Whatever the reason, I retreated, but my dad never pressed the issue. He didn't let me get away with crap, though. One night I was really mad at my mother and said some things that I had no business saying to my mom (or probably anyone else). Well, he was not going to tolerate me speaking to his wife like that and he punched me square in the chest. Hard. I just stood there and stared at him, not willing to give him the satisfaction of seeing me in pain, but that pride left as soon as I was out of sight and sound.
Things weren't bad between us, and I don't mean to give the impression that they were. We just weren't best friends like some fathers and sons. I actually worry that I still don't understand a healthy father and son relationship because I struggle in many of the same ways with my own son. But that's a story for another day.
After serving a mission in Oklahoma, I returned home to Carson City, Nevada, where I lived for a couple of years before moving to Las Vegas. After getting fired from a job (hmm, that's another post topic), I took a job working with my dad. It was only then that I learned he wasn't perfect.
Yes, despite the animosity that sometimes defined our relationship, I still held to the ideal that my dad was perfect. Not perfect in the walk-on-water sense, but in the father hero-worship sense. It didn't matter the question, I could take it to him and he would have the answer. I thought he was the best teacher, best salesman, best businessman that there was. He was what I consider the consummate entrepreneur. He would get a new idea and run with it. Sometimes it would work and he'd be very successful and get bored and sell the business. Other times his ideas would bust, but he'd keep reincarnating them until he found some way to make it work. Despite having eight kids, six of whom were boys, he always found a way to put food on the table and have a roof overhead.
Eventually Clorinda and I were married and my nuclear family went from my mom and dad and siblings to my wife and I and our children. I've taken my kids to work (sitting in a law office is SO MUCH more exciting than riding in a boom lift, I promise kids), coached their soccer teams, played practical jokes on them (sorry about the hair, Marien), struggled to communicate with them as moody teenagers, stayed up at night wondering where they were and when they'd be home. And I've come to understand that despite his imperfections, my dad really is perfect. Not in the walk-on-water sense, and not in the father hero-worship sense, either. Perfect in the sense that he never stopped being a dad. He never stopped doing everything in his power to set an example for his kids of how they should treat their mother, how they should work to provide for their families, how they should study the Gospel and incorporate it into their lives, how they should recognize people in need and do whatever possible to help, and how they should be a friend to even the most unlovable and unlikable because they too were children of God.
Last Monday I spent in a hospital room in Cedar City. My dad teased the nurses who were struggling to find a vein from which they could draw blood. He chatted with a nurse he'd remembered from a prior visit. He asked me to call my mother (who had gone home to get some sleep) and check on her. We talked about my work and about his new calling in church. He would doze off and snore and then be awakened by the beeping of the machines right above his head. He didn't complain. My brother and I were able to give him a blessing before we both had to leave.
I'm not sure why I felt so strongly that I needed to go up to Cedar City last week, but I'm glad I did. My dad was in the hospital for the better part of the week before he was released to go home. I wish I could say it was all better, but just last night I heard again from my mother that he'd been admitted again. More internal bleeding.
Being the dad is hard. Don't give up, Padre. You can do this.
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