Father's Day

So in honor ar Father's day I thought I would copy some things that Amanda said about my dad and I will write some of my own tomorrow. But here is what she said. I swear she should write for a living.



My dad is somewhat of a mystery to me. My understanding of him is based mainly on my understanding of myself, because we are very much alike in personality. My dad is named after his father, who was a doctor and died of cancer in the early seventies. It has been kind of a tradition in my family to name a son Lysle and use his mother's maiden name as the middle name. I'm not sure how this tradition got started or when, but I'll be interested to know if Lew plans on continuing that tradition. My dad is a farmer. There are a lot of things you know immediately about someone when you know he is a farmer. You know that he has battled against nature, sometimes winning, sometimes losing. You know he has spent countless hours tending land, plowing, sowing, spraying, reaping, drying and transporting. You know he has watched the skies with hope, with dread, and with frustration. You know he is intimately familiar with dirt and sweat and hard work. He knows his machines and his land. He is one of the last of a disappearing kind of man.

My early memories of my father are of a somewhat stoic man. I think money weighed on him. The eighties were a tough time for farmers. In 1988, he took a second job working swing shift as an operator at the Louisa power plant. He still farms. I think he thinks of the plant as what allows him to keep farming. I think someday he'd like to go back to just farming.

I'm not sure when the change happened, but I remember it being more of when I left for college. He became a lot more...jovial. Better natured. More quick to smile. He still has the same temper as Emily, but when he wasn't in a temper, he was a lot more likely to be happy. He's still very private; he very rarely says what he's feeling. He shows his love in ways that if you weren't looking for it, you might miss it. Like when he bought me a can of pepper spray. To me, it was as good as saying, "I love you."

There are things that I latch onto because they remind me of him. I recorded Sergeant York off AMC once, and every once in a while, I'll watch it, because it's Dad's favorite movie. He went through a phase once, where he read the Little House books. When we'd groan about our chores, his favorite response was "Well, Laura and Mary had to do this by hand" or "Laura and Mary wouldn't have complained." We were so sick of Laura and Mary. I listen to Variety Time with Leo Greco on Sunday mornings on the way home from church because Dad would. We would groan everytime he'd flip on the radio and a polka would dance out of the speakers. Sometimes he'd acquiesce to our demands and switch the station, but more often he'd make us suffer through it. Now I listen and smile.

Even though I'm not as close to my dad as I am to my mom, I identify with him a lot more. I think we are a lot more alike than we realize, and will probably ever realize, because it's not something we would ever talk about. Being with my dad, sitting in complete silence, is one of the most comfortable places I can be.