Father's Day

My Dad

“It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was.”

Anne Sexton

Today is Father's Day, and most of us are waxing nostalgic about our fathers. Once they are gone, and we realize what an out-sized role they played in our lives, we allow the negatives to fall away and remember only the positives. My own father, Ed Mallonee, had the greatest influence on my life of anyone. He was far from perfect and sometimes he hurt my feelings, but I never once doubted his love for me. He was stern, rough as a cob, and dogmatic in the way of men of that generation (depression era, WW II), but he also delighted in teaching me about the natural world. When he was building his surveying and mapping business, I was still in elementary school. He took me along as his lineman—I held the sighting rod, pulled the measuring chain and slogged through mud and dirt and weeds, happily asking a million questions, all of which he answered. He taught me so much.

My father was also a binge alcoholic. Sometimes his binges lasted for weeks or even months. Typically, he ended up in bed, only waking long enough to drink some more, before passing out again. I remember these times as dark; like watching someone with a terminal illness in their final days of life. The fear that he would die was a heavy weight casting an anxious pall over the entire family. Then he would go off to detox, and come home shaking like a leaf in high wind, but sober. There would be a period of family normalcy, sometimes stretching for as long as a year. When he was good, he was unbeatable, and when he was drunk, he was unbearable.

Hedy Lamar said this about her father: “I am not ashamed to say that no man I ever met was my father's equal, and I never loved any other man as much.” I don't know whether father's realize this is how their daughters feel about them, but I hope they do. Though I cannot know for sure, the love between a father and son seems to be about mutual respect and appreciation. A son needs his father's approval, his blessing and to feel his pride. A daughter needs her father's love, unconditionally. She needs to know he is proud of her, and that she is equally worthy of his respect.

My friend, Anna, asked me how I would remember my father this Father's Day. I said: “I remember my dad every day. His blood runs strong in me.” When I look at my hands, they are his hands; my eyes are his eyes, and so many of my thoughts come straight from him. He will always be my best love, and my eternal teacher.

                                                  In the Spirit,

                                                      Jane