Father’s Day

I had the best of intentions for this Father’s Day, especially since it was also Jeff’s birthday. I was going to have the kids make cards, and despite the fact that Jeff expressly told me not to get him anything (he bought a few shirts which he desperately needed, and said we should consider them his father’s day/birthday gifts), I had planned on picking up some of his favorite beer, a bag of hot chips, and a whoopie cushion (The Noodle’s idea). It would have been the least I could do. I had also planned on running out to “the far book store” to pick up a copy of a book my dad wanted, since none of the local shops had it in stock. I had it all worked out. Our schedule was jam packed, and it was going to require precision timing, but it was a perfect plan. Perfect, that is, until Yum Yums fell and required a trip to the Emergency Room. That kind of threw a monkey wrench in the works. Luckily, help was at hand. Our house just so happened to be completely staffed with exactly the right friends & family to handle such an emergency, and we were able to leave The Noodle & The Muffin at home – at lunchtime – without a single worry. The kids were even given a coat of sunscreen before going outside to play. Talk about great babysitters! If only they’d all agree to move in, life would be perfect. Perfect, except for the fact that now I had no father’s day/birthday gifts, and absolutely no time to get them.
I don’t usually wait until the day before an occasion to shop for gifts. In fact, usually, I’m anxiously waiting to give a personally and lovingly crafted book for Father’s day. It’s become a tradition in our family. But this year, I just couldn’t get it together. I felt terrible. I felt bad to start with that Jeff’s gift was going to be hot chips and beer – and a whoopie cushion; but now i really felt like the worst wife on the planet that I was going to be completely empty handed.
I did manage to salvage the day a tiny bit: I ordered my dad’s book online, and while Jeff was busy helping my dad build an observatory in his backyard, I managed to procure a bag of hot chips & the whoopie cushion for The Noodle’s gift to Jeff.
Did I mention that Jeff and my dad spent their father’s day building an observatory? In my dad’s backyard? I can’t tell you how happy this makes me. I am so very lucky to have a husband that will not only spend his birthday (and father’s day) helping my dad with a construction project, but one who considers this particular construction project to be as cool as My dad and I do.
Watching the two of them, I was reminded of why I love them both so much. I love that my dad can not only navigate his way through the celestial sphere, and identify distant objects twinkling in the night, but that he also understands exactly how his instruments work, and can build the tools with which to better explore them. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to find that he was actually Galileo in a past life, put here and now to sit back and enjoy just how far his inventions have come. This might also explain why he “had to have” that new solar telescope in time to see the transit of Venus.
They say a girl marries a man as closely resembling her father as she can. In my case, I have married a man with some of my dad’s best qualities, and some of my grandfather’s (Dziadzi’s). Jeff is hard working, intelligent, musical, and interested in learning – like my dad; but he is also slow to anger, gentle, kind, and always willing to help – like my Dziadzi. My Dziadzi was (and still is) my hero, and watching my dad & Jeff measuring, and lifting, and sawing, and building, I was reminded of the way Dziadzi used to help in exactly the same way. Fathers and sons working together, helping each other, and learning something new in the process. Gifts and cards really mean very little, when it comes down to it. Especially when you’re gazing at the universe through a piece of glass, in a place you built together.
I’m not going to pretend that I’m not a little jealous. Jeff was the right man for the job, and leaving my mom to tend to all three kids, clean up after breakfast, and get and clean up after lunch all by herself just wouldn’t have been fair. Especially since she & my dad babysat for us just the night before – and were among those who held down the fort as Yum Yums was getting his stitches. I do wish, though, that I could have been the one helping my dad. It looked like a fun project – something to be proud of. Something I could point to years from now and say “Dad & I built that.”
I wonder if Galileo had any daughters…

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I had it all written down. I had explained in great length how it was that I have become engrossed in a classic and momentarily forsaken this blog. I had written about how Melville has been floating around in the collective subconscious for years and years; the references to Moby Dick so ubiquitous they went unnoticed by me until recently. Yes, recently, it all came to a head when The Noodle’s baseball coach mentioned to Jeff that Moby Dick is his absolute most favorite book of all time, and how he gives himself the gift of reading it every year at Christmastime. I had been thinking about picking up a copy when I was watching Starbuck kick some serious ass “tail” on Battlestar Galactica, and realizing that I couldn’t remember anything about the original Starbuck except a vague notion that he or she (I wasn’t entirely sure) was on that whaling ship with Captain Ahab – but I didn’t really know. It was this “not knowing” that made feel like I failed whichever English teacher it was who had assigned it whenever it was that they did. If they did. Maybe it was on a summer reading list. In any case, this all motivated me to find a copy and get to reading. I think I had also mentioned that The Noodle’s coach shared a story about how the founder of Starbucks originally had wanted to name his coffee chain Queequegs, but got talked out of it. Can you imagine what Melville would think seeing one of his character’s name every 3 blocks? – and spoken in the same breath as “grande decaf soy cinnamon dolce late with no whip” (my personal favorite).
Anyway, I had written about all of this – and so much more (and so much more eloquently than I did just now) – but I made a fatal mistake: I assumed that the phone blog app saved drafts automatically. I was wrong – I went to pull it up the next morning, and it was gone. I had even made a joke about how I was “hooked” on Moby Dick.
Ok, so maybe it’s a good thing that draft disappeared. Speaking of which, I’ve got a date with a great white whale. I promise to write more soon.