The Memory Keeper’s Father

Father’s Day is approaching and I gave myself an assignment:
Read Tim Russert’s Wisdom of Our Fathers and let it guide you through memories of your own father. Write down all the things your father did and said for which you’re grateful—the things you should never forget.

Why the Russert book in particular? Because several years ago I bought it for my father for Father’s Day, then got the wacky idea that I’d get a copy, too, and we’d read it and talk about it together. It would structure our phone conversations and, I’d hoped, prompt my father to tell a few stories I’d never heard—perhaps about his own father or grandfather. Together we would also reminisce about our father-daughter relationship.

Of course, it didn’t work out as planned. Instead, we each owned the book, and we each did not read it. Like father, like daughter.

Yesterday I removed the Russert book from a shelf and added it to the 20 pounds of books I’m about to part with (some I’ve read, others I haven’t). But it gnawed at me. Reminded me of my failed plans and guilted me into action. I felt like ONE of us should have read the blasted thing and since my father had already taken off for the Great Beyond, the responsibility fell to me.

So far it’s working! The reading is sweet and easy (the book is a collection of stories written by adult children about their fathers) and I’m creating a list of the ways in which my father positively influenced my life. This will become the list I’ll never want to forget—a fatherhood torch of sorts.

I recommend my assignment to you, though you don’t need the Russert book to do it. If you’re lucky enough to still have your father around, perhaps your list could become your Father’s Day gift to him this year.

I know some of us have/had fathers who aren’t/weren’t great role models. As one man wrote for the Russert book: “My dad was a beast. … I learned much more about love from my dogs than I ever did from my dad.” Even so, even learning from a father that you want to live differently is a lesson to be thankful for.

Do you have a favorite memory of or lesson from your father to share on Lull? Is your father a closet inventor or tireless prankster? What role did he play in your childhood? I’m not asking for masterpieces—just a line or two will do. Do it for your dad.

[Art by Norman Rockwell.]

Paying Tribute to Mothers

Our mothers shape us. Whether through kindness, control, neglect, or guidance, their influence on the adults we become stretches far beyond the genetics we share with them.

The mother of bioacoustic scientist Katy Payne stoked her curiosity and imagination. In Silent Thunder: In the Presence of Elephants, Payne writes of one childhood incident that would have had very different consequences had her mother been cut from the same cloth as, say, Mary Karr’s mom or my father-in-law’s Tiger Mom.

School officials informed her mother that Katy had been getting to school increasingly late. In fact, on that particular day, she had arrived two hours after the other children.

Without reprimand, her mother coaxed from her the reason for the tardiness: Katy had devised an experiment to see if she could differentiate by taste the maple trees she passed on the way to grade school. Her mother’s solution was to wake and dress Katy before sunrise the next day so she had plenty of time to sample the sap of each tree and still get to school on time.

It’s stories like this that make us happy to honor our mothers today, or honor the women who acted as mothers to us. These are the memories worth sharing and savoring with others—especially with the very individual who shaped who we’ve become.

A Mother’s Decision Becomes A Fond Memory

Mother’s Day is upon us—an occasion that may have you thinking about candy, cards, brunch, and flowers. I, on the other hand, have been reminiscing about a car ride…

To get to my grandmother’s house from my childhood home was easy, and I knew every inch of the route:

Up Jackson Street and right on Winter Avenue, which you followed until you met the fork in the road. Veer left and the road wended past fairytale houses—one with a tennis court, one where I would later take horseback-riding lessons on a roan named Cokie (so called because his favorite treat was Coca-Cola)—and at the corner of the landmark pink house, turn right. Follow this road around the swamp and at the first eastside driveway past the ancient tree growing in the middle of the road, turn right. That was Grandma’s. It hardly took 10 minutes to get there and we went there often.

Late one afternoon, we were headed for Grandma’s, but my mother took a different route. No pretty houses, no curving road; all right angles through foreign neighborhoods. I’m sure I asked her why, and probably more than once, but I can no longer remember the story she concocted.

On our way home late that night, Mother drove the regular route. And halfway in, our car lights illuminated what she hadn’t wanted me to see: a dead dog.

Mother muttered something like, “I thought they’d have picked that up by now.” I started crying.

Mother said she was sorry I had to see the dachshund like that. She’d noticed it earlier in the day, hence had taken the long route to Grandma’s with me. I was inconsolable.

Author Susan Chernak McElroy understands. Her mother had told her early on that she’d outgrow her “craziness” over animals. But years passed, and when McElroy tried to write a tribute about her dog—crying all the while—she was ashamed by how strongly she related to her pet. She had come to believe it was, in her words, “a profound indicator of my lack of maturity.”

The truth is that we don’t outgrow the bond. We either deepen it by acting on it—McElroy writes books about it now, some people go into animal care or conservation. Or we hide it—“in-growing” it, as it were. But the bond remains a defining element of our identity and character.

Decades have passed since the dead dog incident of my early childhood. I can still see that dachshund lying on the pavement. And I still marvel at the effort my mother took to spare me the experience (and, no doubt, to spare herself the aggravation of a sobbing child).

Though my mother did not share the deep bond I had with animals, she acknowledged it and accepted it. For this, I’m grateful.

I’m sure my mother sacrificed much for me in my lifetime and went the extra mile for me in all sorts of ways. But the day that she drove the literal extra mile is what I’ll always treasure as one of her greatest gifts to me.

[Pics are types of critters (besides the typical birds, cats, dogs, and horses) I’ve had relationships with, though not the specific ones I knew. Photo credits: box turtle from U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service; bunny by susang2; piglet from New Dawn Farm Sanctuary; octopus by Dave King.]