A Year of Blogging: June 19, 2011

The third Sunday in June is Father's Day. This year, Father's Day falls on June 19. I wrote on Mother's Day that I was incredibly blessed with a super-hero Mom. I was doubly blessed because both of my parents are wonderful. The first word I said was 'Daddy'. My father was my first hero. As a child, I thought he was a giant. Dad is 6'3", which I know is not the tallest person, but as a small child, he sure seemed like he was the tallest. When he put us up on his shoulders, we could see over any crowd. He could push us higher on the swing than Mom could. And he was always easy to spot in a crowd, because he's taller than most of the people around. I still find him by looking to the tallest person in a crowd. Dad was a mechanic. He worked on heavy equipment- like bulldozers and trucks. His job was a very physically demanding job, and he did it for over 32 years. He put in long tiring hours. He worked a lot of overtime. Some nights he would come home and strip down in the yard before coming into the house, because he had gotten as he put it, 'an oil bath'. Sometimes it was a diesel bath. If he was working underneath a machine and something sprung a leak, Dad usually got covered in the liquid. We always ran to his truck once he parked it in the driveway, eager to take his cooler and thermos and paper. We waited on the porch until he had the truck parked, and he opened the door. That was our cue that it was ok to approach the truck. See, Dad didn't drive a pickup. He drove service vehicles. The smaller ones looked like power trucks. The largest one he drove was the size of a tractor-trailer, and had a boom on the flat bed to pick an engine out of the machine. We ran across the driveway, eager to start telling him about our day. I have no doubt that Dad was exhausted, and probably the last thing he wanted to do was listen to two teenage girls carry on, but he did. The nights that he had gotten an oil bath or a diesel bath, he wouldn't even let us touch his cooler and thermos. He said 'go in the house and tell Mom to come out'. So we went into the living room (which is on the backside of the house, away from the driveway) and waited while Mom went out and helped dad hose off in the yard, then he came in and went straight into the shower. Whenever I walk into a Napa store, I think of my Dad. The smell of diesel and oil and car parts brings it all back. Dad's hands seemed permanently stained with grease and oil. When we took a week's vacation, his hands would almost look clean by the end of the week, just in time for him to go back to work. Dad always told my sister and I that we needed to study and go to college, so that we could do a job that used our brains instead of our backs. Even though Dad worked long hours, he made it to all of our events. Even the smallest thing, like the annual Christmas concert, he was there. Some nights he came home as we were leaving, so Mom took us to school while he ate dinner, and then ran home and got him. There were concerts that we told him 'Dad, it's ok. This is no big deal, you don't have to come.' Yet, he came. He may have come in his work uniform, but he was there. The year my sister and I both ran track, he came to every single meet. He not only came, he and Mom brought coolers full of food. One cooler had drinks, another sandwiches and fruit. Mom and Dad became the official track parents. They took in all the athletes, from the Seniors to the 7th graders (I was in 9th grade, Laura in 7th). Dad came when parents who worked closer and more flexible hours did not. People in the school don't remember it now, but my father helped build the cross country course at our school. He did it because my sister wanted to run cross country. He went into the woods with the coach and a chainsaw, and blazed the path. And he beamed with pride when schools who were powerhouses in Cross Country came to our little podunk school and said it was the hardest course they'd ever run. Dad was an imposing figure. He was 6'3", had dark hair and a dark moustache. Due to his truck driving and his job, his arms were thick and muscular. Dad said his arms were 'like oak trees'. He has a deep voice, and is a man of few words. He has a very clear sense of right and wrong, and there's very little gray area with him (someone told me last week that I share that same trait. I don't think it's a bad thing.). And Dad was protective of his daughters. As teenagers, it was not uncommon for Dad to see a boy at school looking at us, and wrap his arm around us to scare the boy off. I've honestly seen guys who were half a foot taller than Dad shudder in his presence. Yet, if you truly knew him, you knew that was just his exterior. A couple of my male friends were talking in high school. One had known me for a couple years, the other practically all my life. The one who hadn't known me long said something about my father being scary. The other friend said 'No, it's her Mom you have to watch out for'. That is so true! Underneath this tough exterior, my father can be a teddy bear. He never minded that he had only daughters. Dad bought us Tonka toys, steel Caterpillar tractors, and each year he had a dirt pile trucked in. The dirt was actually to re-level the driveway after the winter, but it quickly became the play spot in the neighborhood. The neighborhood boys had sand boxes, but the Primeau girls had their own dirt pile (it had filled a dump truck!). My father is the biggest sports fan I know, and he passed that to us at a young age. We went to the local minor league baseball team. We went to RPI to see hockey games at the Fieldhouse. As we got older, he took us to football games and NASCAR races. He took my sister to Shea Stadium to see the Mets play (she has since converted from the dark side), and he took me to Montreal to see the Canadiens play at the Forum. Dad said he would take us to any event we wanted to see. When I was about 17, we saw that the Monster Trucks were going to be at the nearby speedway. Dad said 'I don't know how to get tickets'. The commercial said that tickets were available at the speedway, so my sister and I drove down the next day and bought three tickets (Mom was adamant that she was not going). So Dad took us to the Monster Truck rally! My sister and I today like different sports, but we are passionate about those. That passion, which borders on fanaticism, was planted by Dad. Dad didn't try to make us tomboys. He acknowledged that we were girls. My father was the person who picked out both of our First Communion outfits. He found one for me which was all ruffles and pleats and just as feminine as could be. For my sister, who hated wearing dresses, he found one that had just the bare minimum of ruffles. He has always done a good job picking out dresses for us. He does a good job choosing dresses for Syd too. He picked out my comforter set when I was 10. We were in the store looking, and Dad found one that was perfect. It was white with pink and blue roses- it wasn't childish, but it wasn't too grown up. Of course, Dad has always done better with our outfits than he has with his own. We don't let him dress himself. Well, every day things like t-shirts and jeans, he can handle. But if we are going out to dinner, or to church, or something special, one of the women (either mom or one of us girls) tells him what to wear. He lost the right to choose his own outfits the day about 20 years ago when he came downstairs and announced he was ready to go. He had on a Kyle Petty Mellow Yellow race t-shirt (which had neon green on it), a pair of mint-green plaid golf shorts, and a pair of Green Bay packers socks. His argument was 'there's green in each thing!' We still tease him about that outfit. Dad taught me to tie my shoes. He tied them so tightly it hurt, and I quickly learned how to re-tie them so they were comfortable. He taught me how to ride a bike without training wheels, running along beside me in the driveway. He did not teach me how to drive- he didn't have the patience for that. But once I had my driver's license, he taught me how to change the oil and to change a tire. He taught me the tree in the back yard did not grow dollar bills. And he taught me no matter how old I am, or how far away I move, he's always there for me.