Father's Day After Dad (Not to Get Too Maudlin or Anything)

      Every year on Mother's and Father's Days I feel a vague sense of aimlessness and resentment, based on the fact that I no longer have either a mother or a father to whom to make the obligatory phone call, or to send the expected card. The resentment isn't with my parents for having checked out at relatively young ages (cancer both times), but rather with the world at large for so cheerfully reminding me at least twice a year, via the power of advertising, that Mom & Dad are no longer accepting their obeisances, and in fact aren't even available for a nice chat. Of course that isn't the world's fault any more than it is my parents', but feelings certainly don't need to be rational to be real.
      On Father's Day at least I have my father-in-law, a semi-retired American Baptist minister, a counsellor, a lover of books and history, and by any objective standard a swell guy. In most particulars, he and my own father couldn't have been more different--my father was bald from his thirties; my father-in-law still sports a shocking and impenetrably thick pelt which, even in its current complete whiteness, could be the envy of any 25 year-old. My father once let me assist him in the construction of a dot matrix printer for his computer--from a kit that actually required the soldering of components onto the circuit board from a schematic diagram; my father-in-law can still become lost in the wilds of his email program. In any group of strangers my father became shy and retiring and said little; my father-in-law comes to life with strangers, asks them about their lives, regales them with his formidable collection of personal anecdotes, and generally makes them feel special, appreciated, and better off for having met him, however briefly. My father-in-law is now the one with whom I can commiserate about the shameful play of the Mets and Pirates, and to whom I will happily listen as he decries the breaking of sports rules which haven't been in effect since the early 70's (Do not get him started on breaking the plane of the goal line. Just don't go there.). Happy Father's Day Don, you white-haired smoothie, you.
      But since Father's Day has me wishing I could have Dad over for a nice steak off the grill he bought for my first house-warming, and since he's not around to become embarrassed, I feel free to tell one of my favorite tales of one of his less brilliant moments as head of the Waldron gang. In his defense, I will begin the tale by informing dear reader that I do have four brothers, and the oldest is only seven years older than I, the youngest. So the pace of life for my parents in the days of my youth probably hovered somewhere between "dull roar" and "riot control," depending upon our sugar levels. And generally speaking, my mother was the one to take us to the doctor when germs, or hurled rocks, or the simple fact that gravity works made such a visit necessary. So my father was already out of his element when he had to take my six year-old self to the doctor's office to deal with one of the dozens and dozens of ear infections our germy little clan no doubt contracted in those days.
      There we sat at the nurse's reception desk, Dad in front and I kicking my heels on a too-tall chair behind. The nurse needed my particulars of course, so she bent over her form and tossed my dad what she probably thought would be an easy one, just to get warmed up. "Patient's name?" There was a pause. The nurse looked up at my father and tried again. "The patient's name?" Another pause. OK, I thought, this is totally understandable. He's got the five of us and, ha, ha, he's forgotten which one he's got in tow this time. That's pretty funny. Now he'll have to turn around to check. And he did turn around. And stared at me. Blankly. It was the look of a man who had begun some sort of errand or other, but then had wandered into a completely unrelated train of thought, or maybe gotten a song stuck in his head, and now no longer had any idea of why he had left the house. I had innocently expected that seeing my face would have snapped him back to his errand--or at least provided him with the required name--but no dice. The stare became uncomfortable, in both its length and total blankness. "Peter," I offered helpfully. He turned to the nurse. "His name's Peter," he said redundantly, and on we went.
      I suppose some folks end up in therapy over such things--"he couldn't even remember my name boo hoo"--but even at age six I had enough sympathy to be nothing but amused. I still don't know how my parents survived the five of us; just the thought of it makes me want to go lie down. How does anyone shoulder a responsibility that can weary and distract you to the point where you can stare at your own child and not know who the hell he is? But somehow Dad and Mom did it, and we all have college degrees, and we're all happily married, and none of us has spent the night in jail, and the other four even have kids of their own, bless their hearts. So Happy Father's Day, guys! And Happy Father's Day, Dad; the next steak will be for you.