Yesterday was Father’s Day, and
I’ve been thinking a lot about my dad lately. I wonder what he would make of
the current state of the world. He was a smart man, and I relied so on his
guidance. Dad was 98 years old when he passed. He died May 18th 2009,
and while I don’t usually keep track of these morbid anniversaries, it was one
of the entries on a voice recorder I keep in my car. I have several voice
recorders, because I have a lousy memory, and I make notes all the time. Especially
when a lyric idea comes to mind, I need to record it before it disappears. When
I turned the recorder on the other day, and scrolled back to a random entry, it
happened to be a record of the date of Dad’s passing. That took me by surprise.
First, it didn’t seem as if more than ten years had passed since Dad had died,
and second, I found it strange that I ended up listening to that particular entry,
less than a week before Father’s Day. Was it my dad sending me a message from
beyond?
About 5 years ago, I wrote the first draft of an as-yet unfinished song entitled “Bassett’s Farm”. The song is about the first time I was reminded that my dad was vulnerable like the rest of us. I was perhaps 7 years old, and we were on a farm in Crystal Beach, near our summer home in Ft. Erie. My parents kept and rode their horses there during the summer months. I was alone with my dad in a barn and I was helping him by “muck out” a horse stall. Suddenly, I heard him calling for me from the other side of the barn, and the call sounded urgent. He had been operating a mechanical manure spreader hanging from a ceiling track, and something happened which caused his thumb to get caught in the gears. While he wasn’t badly injured, he might have lost his thumb had I not been there to release the pressure that allowed him to free his hand. It was a very strange and frightening experience, and I never forgot it.
My dad and I had a complicated
relationship when I was younger. He was my mom’s second husband, and he was in
his mid-forties when I was born. I was his only child. He was a good dad, and he
spent a lot of time with me when I was young, but by the time I was a young teenager,
we fought a lot. I resented him at the time for not understanding me better. In
hindsight, I feel bad about that. I
think he did the best he could. Now that I have the benefit of perspective, I better
understand some of the things that made him who he was. Thankfully, we worked
out our differences and became good friends after working together in family business
for 20 years.
Like Joni Mitchell sings in “Big Yellow Taxi”, “Don’t it always seem to go, you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone”. When I was younger, I didn’t appreciate my mom and dad half as much as I do now that they are gone. Things could have gone terribly wrong with me, and both my parents guided me through some troubled times. I am thankful to have had my dad for a father. He was a good, kind man, and his mentoring helped better prepare me for future tribulations. I love him and I know he loved me. Someday maybe I’ll finish that song.
Written by Jamie Oppenheimer ©2020 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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