Father's Day

My dad was born in the Texas Panhandle, on a farm near Petersburg. It was long, long ago-- there were no tvs, no i-phone, no i-phone 3.0, no facebook, let alone microwaves, home depot and HEB Central Market. They lived out on the South Plains in a little farmhouse where my granddaddy (in Texas this is pronounced grandaddy, just one d) grew cotton and my grandmother was a housewife, which meant she did everything else. Because childhood back then was not filled with play dates and baby einstein, my dad worked on the farm. He worked in the fields and drove the tractor and doctored the cows. Because families were not in this constant mad rush we all deal with filled with electronic baby sitters and televisions in every room and twitter, etc., he actually did stuff with his family. My granddaddy was a baseball nut (which he followed on the radio) and erected a backboard in his pasture. They had a farm team--other kids from nearby farms were team members, even the lone black family was recruited into the effort. When they played the team from Abernathy they were intimidated by their fancy town kid uniforms--farm kids played in their overalls-- and, unlike a tv movie, they got whipped. They had ice cream making parties with their relatives, where everyone took a turn cranking. His father was in a gospel quartet for which his mother played the piano. They were Baptist so there was no drinking and no dancing. The preacher would come over for Sunday dinner and once said the following prayer over my grandmother's delicious ham "God bless the food, pass the ham."

Because a lot of time there is nothing "fun" to do on a farm, my dad became pretty well rounded in the field of sports and, like his daddy, learned to play tennis, golf, box, basketball and of course, like every good Texan, football. He was the high school quarterback. He did all kinds of crazy stunts in high school and once told me "Our school was so small, we were all the good kids and the bad kids." He won the award for best all around athlete in school. It is a beautiful gold trophy cup. He has always told Audrey and I that if one of us could ever beat him swimming, we could have his trophy. It currently sits in his bookcase.

He grew up "farting around with tractors" so he learned to fix stuff. And because of working on those tractors he is really hard of hearing.

He grew up calling his parents "mother 'n daddy" and does so to this day.

He went to West Texas State University and then joined the Air Force and was transferred to Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. Growing up in the South plains, everyone looked pretty much like him, blond hair and blue eyes, and when he moved to San Antonio he noticed that he stuck out and people seemed to stare at him. He met my mom at the apartment complex they both lived at and after six months they were married. He didn't invite his parents to their wedding and my mom's dad refused to come, he was so angry that she married an anglo. Thirty years later my dad was his favorite son-in-law, the only one who could give him his shots and the only one who was allowed to touch his tools.

So what is he like? He is as big and sunny as the West Texas sky and his optimism and joy for life are just as endless. His mottoes are "if you can't fix it, get a bigger hammer." And if faced with trouble, well, "ain't no hill for a stepper"

When he worked at Brooks, he once saw two black men, back from Vietnam, missing some limbs and he thought to himself "you know, those men lost their arms fighting for my country." He told me that that sight cured just about any prejudice that he had ever considered having to begin with.

It was a world away from this life, during a war, in Vietnam,where my husband was born. A ten pound baby. The village freak because of his size and white skin. When Saigon fell, my father-in-law told my mother-in-law that they were having a practice drill and that they needed to get on the American's tanker. It was a lie, of course. There was no drill, but he knew if he told her the truth she would never leave. Hyphen, true to form almost died on the trip to the US (motion sickness even as a baby).

Hyphen grew up between two places. He has a nostalgic longing for a place he's only heard about and at the same time a love for Cowboys and Indians, the VFW and the Rotary club, and the family who has the preacher over for Sunday dinner. Neither of these places quite fits him.

I like to watch people and I've watched Hyphen grow up. I watched his face for clues when we played Spades in high school when our teacher was out sick, and I watched his face as our child came out of my body. I will never forget how he looked at Annabelle when they were cleaning her up, no matter what happens to me, to us, to anything, I will never forget that.

Although I make fun of Hyphen, because he is crazy, he is also a good man. People always tell me that because his goodness seeps out of him, despite his outward curmudgeon. He's the type of person that will hold the door open for a homeless person or give the clothes off of his back (he actually did this) to an employee who needed a dress shirt.

These are the men in my life. And it has been a great honor to be a part of theirs.

Happy Father's Day.