The glory of fatherhood

To tell you the truth, if it hadn’t been suggested that I write a Father’s Day column, I’d probably be giving this tribute day scant attention.

Perhaps Father’s Day is a big deal in your family. Children come bearing gifts. Dad is the object of rapt attention. My family has never worked that way.

My adult children, Jenny and Dennis, live beyond Napa. Today neither is likely to let loose with a Dad’s Day greeting. Not even an e-mail.

They reserve single-sentence e-mails for my birthday ... on years when memory permits.

That’s OK. Really. When my kids were growing up, I would scoff at Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. The bogus “Hallmark holidays,” I called them. You reap what you sow.

With my kids typically no-shows, I have relied on wives to fete me each June. Blueberry muffins baked in my honor, say. In recent times, a box of See’s.

Sweet moments, these.

With the muffins and chocolates came an unspoken obligation. You celebrate my Father’s Day and I’ll do you right at Mother’s Day. If necessary, we’ll leave kids totally out of the equation.

While I’m not a big fan of the third Sunday in June, Father’s Day does trigger thoughts about my dadness and whether I was very good at it and will be remembered as having lived up to minimum standards.

When you die, it’s said that you live on in the memories of others. Like that’s a reassuring thing.

I’ve never raised this notion with my kids. I mean, where would you begin?

I’m sure they’ll remember the camping trips — the camp fires, the s’mores, the ranger talks about bears.

Many dads bestow pearls of wisdom — quotable stuff — that their children pass on to their children. Mottos like “work before play” or “success is 90 percent perspiration, 10 percent inspiration.”

Such gems never came from my mouth. My kids’ audio record of me may be a blank.

But surely they’ll remember that dear dad tried his best.

That he took a crimped aptitude for dadhood and ran with it.

Saturday soccer games, Indian Princess meetings, back-to-school nights. He never flinched.

Yes, dad did daydream a lot, but these were mere mental wanderings.

Physically, he was always there, ready for the next parenting assignment.

My kids’ memories will include a divorce.

Not a great thing, certainly, but it didn’t happen until they were out of high school. Surely, this will be seen as significant.

They were not 13, my tender age when my parents split.

I visited Iowa last month for five days of unfettered Dennis access.

No work, no spouse, no girlfriend.

Just Dennis and me, hanging out.

Two guys hanging out may not sound like much. Isn’t that what guys do?

Not if you’re Dennis and me. By and large, we don’t do buddy-buddy. We naturally keep people at arm’s length.

Yet we accept each other.

We’re father and son; friend, not foe.

We share a unique frame of reference.

We can handle silences. We’re comfortable waiting for words to bubble up.

Anything Dennis says is of interest to me, even the boring stuff.

He was born with a special dispensation to be boring if he wants.

 Of the billions of people on this planet, he is one of only two to have sprung from my loins.

Dennis and I never talked deep during my visit. We didn’t hash out childhood traumas or pick apart my parenting performance.

We just talked. Mundane talk.

Gobs of it.

On our final day, we went to the Iowa City food co-op and bought sushi and pasta salads and a slice of banana-carrot cake (my sweet tooth talking).

At the city library, we checked out a Taiwanese movie that neither of us had ever heard of: “Good-bye, South, Good-bye.”

That night, Dennis raided his tiny wine cellar for a cheap pinot noir.

Sitting on his couch, we feasted on sushi and salads, split the banana-carrot cake as we were scripted to do and watched a slightly ridiculous Asian gangster movie, loving every minute of it.

Several times, I detached from our movie and thought how improbable all this was. I’m in Iowa with a mathematician who amazingly shares many of my taste preferences. And he accepts me into his world. Without hesitation.

This is fatherhood, I thought. This is the glory of it all.

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