Yesterday was Father’s Day, and though my dad’s been
gone a long time now, Father’s Day is still a bittersweet day for me. It seems
like only yesterday I was calling him up to bitch about the Buffalo Sabres. Until
he was in his early 90’s I still relied on his judgment and advice, and I think
about him and Mom every day. One thing is for sure, Dad’s personality is indelibly
infused in me. There are things I do, both good and bad, which are so similar
to my dad that it’s spooky. Shauna says I talk to our dog Jasper in the same
baby talk voice that he used to talk to our dogs. It can be unsettling to
realize I have little control over the traits I’ve inherited from my father. Some
of us put our parents in the god-like category when they pass, and this belies
the reality that most parents are not perfect. My dad had his faults but, almost
a decade after he passed, I don’t think about them so much. Funny thing about
the passage of time.
There was a photo taken of my dad a long time ago, out
west in Palm Springs. When I was young, my family, all horse lovers except me,
vacationed in Palm Spring during our spring break. There we spent a lot of time riding “western saddle” in the desert and in the nearby mountains. Being
the youngest child, I had no say in the matter, and I did a lot of involuntary horseback
riding, but that’s another report. It wasn’t so bad, and we rode all over what
was back in the 1960s barren desert. There was a unique freedom I experienced
riding horseback in the open desert. I’ve written a lot of songs about the
desert, so it clearly made a strong impression on me. When my dad died in 2009
or thereabouts, and shortly before his funeral ceremony, I found an old black
and white 8x10 photo of him on a horse, up in the mountains overlooking the then
tiny town of Palm Springs. In my eulogy for him I said that this picture
embodied what my dad was to me: bigger than life, strong, smart, in control,
competent; the guy you wanted around in a crisis. He made me feel safe. To this
day I draw on his strength.
I told a story on Facebook the other day about my dad
taking me to a roadside carnival when I was a little boy. He thought it would
be a big thrill for me to ride the miniature choo choo train, but when I got
off the ride, I told him I could have walked faster. I was about four, and for
the rest if his life, he loved to tell people that story about how his wise ass
little boy was a chip off the old block. My dad was a funny guy, with a
perfectly balanced combination of irreverence, humility, and dry wit that
ingratiated him to all who knew him. He was a very popular guy, but he always
held his cards close to his chest. His family knew him well, and loved him for
the good man he was, but I don’t think many people knew him the way I did.
Years ago, I wrote a very personal song entitled Bassett’s Farm, about the first time I discovered my father was a
mere mortal. He had an accident, almost losing his thumb in a piece of farm
machinery, and I, who was probably ten at the time, was the one who came to the
rescue. My perfect dad made mistakes.
Somewhere between the Stetson-wearing John Wayne dad, up
on a mountaintop riding his horse, overlooking a huge valley below him, and the
dad who needed his son’s help when he got his thumb stuck in a manure spreader,
lies the complicated, fallible, wonderful human being who was my father. Overall,
he was a great dad, and I always knew I could count on him. All the parts that
made him complicated have made me complicated. For better or for worse, we carry
the genetic imprint of our parents, and the more effectively we embrace that
fact, the better we will understand and be able to improve ourselves. A belated
Happy Father’s Day to one and all.
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Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2018 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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