This picture is of my parents, taken from a Caribbean cruise they went on two summers ago. The one on the left, obviously, is my dad.
A few days ago, I went back to my parents' house to do some cleaning before my mom returned from Honolulu. I was clearing the kitchen table of the daily newspapers that had accumulated into a tall pile, and as I removed them, I noticed a printout from an Internet site. Upon closer examination, I realized it was an article, a tech column, on Apple's recent decision to switch to Intel chips.
About two weeks ago, I had briefly mentioned to my father this decision in an attempt to lure him into conversation, an attempt which failed to procure more than a few words and maybe a nod from him. And instead of engaging in dialogue with me then and there, he went home, did his own research, and printed out his results for me. Because that's how he works.
I've been told by friends and boyfriends that I'm a very generous person, very giving, very thoughtful. I used to always attribute this to my mother, who truly is an incredibly selfless soul, but lately, I've begun to suspect that my father has been a factor in this trait of mine, as well. I can't begin to count how many times I would mention something to him-- some new technology, a computer game, books, some tech-y toy-- and shortly after, I would come home to find it in the family room or the kitchen, he having silently gone out and bought it for me. Last summer, I was trying to teach myself Javascript, and I was having some difficulty with the books he had on the subject because they were written in the early '90s. After he had identified that as the problem, I just shrugged indifferently and figured I'd just do it without the CD accompaniment and adjust accordingly; he had a different agenda. No more than a week later, a package arrived from Amazon.com, and inside were two updated books on Javascript, which, I learned, he had purchased specifically for me.
When I was younger, he was always taking me to the library, and occasionally there would come a weekend when a computer show was taking place, and he'd let me accompany him on those trips as well (we still have all the computer games he bought for me from those shows). Books and computers-- the two major objects of his fixation (though the books have, over the last few years, been replaced by movies), a passion I gladly inherited. I've been on computers for as long as I can remember, and he gave me my own when I was seven or eight (maybe earlier). He also used to be very involved with ham radio and encouraged me to get my license, and though I studied and tested twice, I always came up short on my scores (unlike my sister, who I believe got her license on the first try). And though my mother claims I taught myself to read when I was three so I could master the TV Guide, I know I wouldn't have thrown myself into the world of books if it hadn't been for my dad, all those trips to the library, and the fact that he always had a book with him, no matter where we went.
Without question, he is highly intelligent. My mother likes to say, from time to time, "Thank god you got your father's brains!" and she seems confident that this is so, but I think when I was younger, he worried that this wasn't necessarily the case, and therefore battered me with IQ tests quickly after I became literate. I always scored well, but his response, then, was a guarded, "Well, scores aren't always accurate when you're younger than 11." Even now, once in a while I'll take a test online and send him the score ("Look, I got a 152!"), but there's never any enthusiasm on the receiving end; if anything, it's a sense of quiet relief, like, oh thank goodness, I didn't produce a brainless child.
When I was little, I used to anticipate his coming home by positioning myself at the far end of the hallway as soon as I heard the garage door open. He would come into the house, appear at the other end of the hallway, and I would sprint down the carpet and literally jump on him, delighting in his return while simultaneously fearing the stubble of his five-o'-clock shadow. Other times, I would wrap myself around his leg like a bear clinging to a tree branch, and rather than shaking me off, he would oblige me and limp around the house as I kept my hold.
He's impossible to get satisfactory answers from. If you ask him where he's going, he'll tell you he's going "out." If you press him for details, he'll either motion vaguely in the direction of his destination, or he'll pretend he didn't hear you. Ask him what he considers to be a stupid question, and he'll give you his signature look-- one eyebrow furrowed, face filled with suspicion and curiosity, as though he's thinking, "You didn't really ask me that, did you? Do you really expect me to answer that? Because that was a really stupid question." And he will, on occasion, eat his hot dogs with not only ketchup, but with ketchup AND PEANUT BUTTER.
And I am his daughter.
Happy Father's Day, Daddy. Thank you for everything you've done for and given me these last 21 years, and sorry if there were any typos in this. I love you.
