Happy Birthday, Daddy
Why is it that people remain a specific age in our minds no matter how old they really are when we lose them?
My grandpa was 89 when he died in 2008, but he will always be in his mid-60s in my mind. That was the age when he raced me across the yard and let me win. That was the age he helped me learn to balance on my bicycle. That was the age he was when I was a kid, and, even though I clearly see him at 89, he will always be that mid-60s man in jeans, suspenders and cowboy boots. He never seemed old to me.
Today is my dad’s birthday. He would have been 70 today. When he was 12, he was in a car accident that left him paralyzed. He lived the remainder of his life wheelchair bound … with the notion that he wouldn’t live past 30 because doctors in 1956 didn’t think he would.
Dad met my mom when he was 30 … he told her that she wouldn’t have him very long because his doctor didn’t expect him to live past 40. He met me shortly thereafter 🙂 … I take full responsibility for being the reason he lived to be 66, too! He defied the odds in so many ways. In doing so, he taught me a very valuable lesson.
It’s hard for me to imagine him at age 70. It’s hard for me to remember him even at age 66 because I so clearly remember him at 46. I remember when he sliced his thumb nearly off while carving a Thanksgiving turkey – I was 13 or 14 then. I remember sitting on his lap in front of my grandparent’s house waiting to leave for Easter church service – I was 3, I think. I remember him telling me to stay away from my uncle’s mean red dog and him cringing when I would break that rule to prove myself a “a dog whisperer” – I was 9, maybe. That mean red dog loved me!
We used to stay up all hours of weekend nights watching Abbott and Costello on public television … or old horror movies like “The Thing”. We watched Star Trek re-re-reruns, and later, The Next Generation, and all of the movies. We debated how time travel could really work after watching The Time Machine (1960s version, thank you!). Mom thought we were nuts …
As I grew older and hopefully a little wiser, conversations about time travel gave way to conversations about career and marriage … and eventually raising kids. We still talked about time travel, though. He was always my Devil’s Advocate. It didn’t matter if he agreed with me or not, he always forced me to look at things from the other side … from a different perspective. He made me think about how my actions or choices would impact those around me. He taught me to see connections and to look for how changes would alter those connections. I don’t know if he intended this, but he made me a really good strategist.
It’s a strange thing to think about … how people never really age when they’re right in front of us. We see parents every day for a good part of our lives, then, hopefully, frequently enough that we don’t notice when hair begins to turn gray and age begins to make its mark. When you’re so close to someone, they never really change … they simply become an amalgamation of your memories.
