Father’s Day is next week, and my favorite bookstore is full of cards for the occasion. Some are funny, some are tender, and they all make me a bit sad, remembering my Dad, and a bit happy, remembering my Dad. Like many men of his generation he served in World War II, and I probably wouldn’t be here writing this if that hadn’t been the case. He was born and raised in Brooklyn, my Mom was born and raised in a tiny town in Texas, and they only met because the Army Air Force stationed him in Amarillo Texas. This fact has often led me to muse that the purpose of war is not world domination, but rather the stirring up of the gene pool. It would explain why, despite all these millennia of killing each other, there are more of us all the time.
After the war they worked their way back to New York, to a house in the suburbs and, eventually, four children. This was Dad’s favorite picture of the first two of us – me and my older sister. Dad called us his “hobos.” I remember that hat, which I wore for years until either I outgrew it or it fell apart. There has never since been a hat so fine to wear.
Dad was a wonderful photographer, shooting black and white film and making gorgeous prints. I used to watch him in the darkroom, waving his hands between the enlarger and the photographic paper, a magician altering exposures for emotional depth. I always thought his prints were museum worthy but, trained as an engineer, he denied being an artist. He always encouraged and supported me in my own work as an artist and poet, and claimed he had no idea where I got it from. He said he “didn’t get” poetry. Then my Mom slid into dementia, and I showed him a poem I wrote about it. And he said, “Now I get poetry. It’s like why I take black and white pictures instead of color.”
He had other hobbies, too – a wood shop, a metal shop, restoring antique cars, shooting at a rifle range. He taught me to shoot what we called my mother’s .22, though I never saw her shoot it. When age made it too hard for him to use his shop equipment, he built model ships. I have his model of The Victory here, in a town unexpectedly suitable for the name. I have many of his custom-made tools, too, repurposed for my crafts. Writing this, I can see where I got my propensity for running many creative outlets at once.
He also gave me my love of classical music, which was always playing when he was home. He gave me my first serious camera when I was a teenager, and this is a photo I took of him with it. He looks – well, a little amused, a little proud, a little indulgent. This is how I remember my father’s face; a face it always made me happy to see. Happy Father’s Day, Dad.
What Heaven Would Be Like
In my father’s heaven, there would be
perpetual restoration of antique cars.
The needed part would turn up
at the perfect moment,
just late enough
for deep satisfaction.
Authentic colors of paint
would line his garage,
real wood for the dash,
real leather for the seats,
and none of the necessary clanging
of this ecstatic work
would drown out Moussorgsky,
Tchaikovsky, or Zarathustra.
In my mother’s heaven,
there would be no workshops.
My father, coming in
from the harp-strung air,
would listen only to her,
and however wild and incredible
the stories she told,
he would believe them,
and they would be true.
published in The Kansas Quarterly
My neighbor texted me the other day to tell me there were two great horned owls on the roof of her pool house. They were eyeing the pool vacuum with great interest, in case it climbed out of the pool and was revealed as dinner. Eventually they lifted their heads, the larger one outstared the smaller, and the smaller retreated to the far corner of the roof. Since female great horneds are larger than males we assumed this was a couple, and anthropomorphized a spat for them. But this was way past mating season for great horned owls, and on reflection this was more likely Momma and a growing chick. Was she teaching him to hunt? Trying to get him to fend for himself? Trying to get some time to herself for heaven’s sake? Still anthropomorphizing.
But birds, like people, do need to care for their young for a good chunk of their lives. We can relate. Not long after seeing the owls – though, sadly, after leaving my camera in the house – I walked out to my mailbox and found a baby robin hopping along the driveway near the crabapple tree. I could see where the nest was, though I couldn’t reach it. It looked like everyone else had fledged, but Junior had not quite made it. As he hopped he flapped his wings a bit, but didn’t get any lift.
I walked after him wondering what I should do, but the point was soon moot. He headed for this nice, thick stand of mountain mint, disappeared into it, and began to cheep. Good cover, I thought. It was a nice, steady cheep, like a beacon. Then I noticed that baby and I were being watched by a full-sized robin on the lawn. I took the mail back into the house and looked out the window to see big robin pulling a worm from the lawn, and carrying it into the cheeping mintpatch.
Next morning the cheeping came from a tall clump of Siberian Iris on the other side of my front door, and the parent robin waded in with another beakfull of worm. A successful night. There was cheeping and worm catering the next day too, from a little further back. A second successful night. The morning after that I didn’t hear him. Did baby bird learn to fly? Was he cheeping somewhere else? I hope those owls didn’t find him.
I’ve read that fewer than half of all baby robins survive, and yet robins are not endangered. They’re busy all summer, laying eggs, feeding babies, traipsing around after fledglings, repeating the process two or three times per summer just to survive. Free as a bird, we say, watching them fly and hearing them sing. In fact they are bundles of purpose. I’m glad to see them taking the occasional break – or so I think of it – in the local spa.
One of the joys of the spring garden is surprise. Where did these ultra-fluffy, double pink columbine come from? Not only don’t I remember buying them, I don’t remember even knowing they existed. Could they have arrived as seeds embedded in bird droppings? Such an ignoble origin. Could there be a Johnny Columbineseed at large in Ann Arbor, spiriting unusual flowers into unsuspecting gardens under cover of night?
Then over here, how did one tiny patch of forget-me-nots take over the entire flowerbed, even crowding out weeds? A blue haze under the fading spikes of daffodil leaves, it manages to be really in your face despite such tiny petals. It should be called I-dare-you-to-forget-mes.
Moving around to the back yard, a flower pot that once held cosmos has come up with a crop of these little purple flowers, small enough to be violets but somehow I wasn’t convinced. Pansies were in the pot next to it last year. My garden books say four petals up and one down makes it a pansy, two petals up and three down is a violet. Two up, one down, and two sticking out to the side? Panselets?
And then there’s the asparagus patch. I’ve seen it every year since we moved into this house, but it still makes me laugh to see the way it comes up out of the ground, looking for all the world like someone has snuck out to the garden and stood a bunch of asparagus spears upright in the dirt as a practical joke. But no, they’re growing right out of the ground. The second joy of the spring garden: that dirt, water, and sunlight turn into food and beauty, whether the way we expected or not.
It seems odd coming right after Easter like this, but happy April Fools Day! Salt in the sugar bowl, bubble wrap under the rug – are they classics, or cliches? Here’s a poem for which I gathered and strung together all the chicken cliches I could think of. Credit to Blain’s Farm and Fleet of Jackson, Michigan, for the chicken flock photo.
Robin Richstone 