A Song From my Father

The Lesson is more reliable than the memory

My father is not a proud man. Not in the traditional sense. He appears reserved, even stoic in the way people abuse the term these days. It was not until much later in life that I began to see how deep that man’s feelings ran. Still waters and all that. As anyone whose primary love language is acts of service, his affection could always be found in the doing. The effort. The meaning of which can truly be felt and measured in direct proportion to the often obscene demands on such people’s time.

I cannot label the way I was raised as a mistake; it was anything but. I can, however, connect this upbringing to the feelings of inadequacy when I look back on the years I spent raising my daughter. It is fitting, that I would tell my father that he was an exceptional dad, just as my daughter has told me. For, I imagine that the doubts surrounding the issue are genetic. This is not, however, a generational curse, nor are these words meant to devolve into an armchair Freudian expose’. Suffice it to say, the guidance I received might not have been always visible, but neither is the wind that brings a sailor home.

There are three distinct times I can recall that my father played a song for me. Today, was not one of them, but he was listening to it all the same, quietly in his office as we finished the days labor. It was a challenging day for both of us. Much more work than either of us anticipated as we both found ourselves lacking our respective seconds-in-command at the shop. It is always the otherwise slower days when the absence of a solid co-worker is more conspicuous. There is no grand swath of projects and other teams into which one can disseminate the extra work. Instead, it was just he and I, kind of like the old days. Two Spartans wearing several hats.

At first, the quiet was rather nice. As if by providence, a dear friend of mine sent me a link to a lecture on Nietzsche. I think he meant to spark a discussion by doing so, but alas, I was too busy to respond. Still, I listened. It is worth mentioning, by this point, my frustration was mitigated but stout. We already had a few out thanks to the pandemic (and their own carelessness) And my Lieutenant, well…I spent the wee hours of this morning picking him up from jail as he was wasted and rolled his car.

So, as I listened to the lecture, I was perhaps too wrapped up in the difference between slave and master morality, insofar as I remembered from academia that one of the key components of the latter being the ability to keep promises. I am not much for Nietzsche, but on this I am somewhat compelled to agree. Regardless of the moral system one employs, a baseline principle must be the keeping of one’s word. Further discussion on this warrants its own essay. For now, it is enough to state that this line of thinking, in tandem with the sudden disappearance of back up, exacerbated my trust and ironic attachment issues with most people. My Dad isn’t one of them.

The day reached its end, and in only eight hours at that. A two-thirds shift by my standards. Half for the old man. It was full. Packed with enough, and enough different types of work to feel much more exhausting than a shorter than average Saturday might suggest. I had successfully beat back my temper in several spurts, hardly allowing more than a sour look and dour gait at any point. Still, there was a nagging fear that this newfound lack of trust for the staff was going to manifest itself whether I wanted it to or not. So, what then, to do?

I never had his steadfast self-control. This was the man who ran after one of our delivery vans as it was being stolen at 3am. This Buddha-calm badass grabbed onto the driver’s side mirror of the moving vehicle and got dragged well over a mile while he quietly explained to the thief that if he fell off and got seriously injured, they would be liable for much more than grand theft auto. That kid must’ve been scared out of his damn mind. But, he did indeed slow down enough for the crazy man, hanging onto the side mirror like he was in a buddy cop movie, to roll off into a ditch. At which point this quiet man walked back to the shop and reported his property stolen.

The crew and I would arrive a few hours later and begin exchanging stories of how our nights had gone. This guy, calmly walked over to the prep table where we gathered and gently placed a road-rashed shoe in front of us and say, “Let me tell you about my night.” Such was his way. It took me a while to see it for the very definition of consistent care that it belied. That van was how we delivered our food. How his company provided for his family. Chasing after it probably wasn’t even a question.

There have been many days and nights from that one to this. All with some mixture of laughter, sweat and frustration. Yet, as I was leaving and had said goodnight, there was that damn song.

Of the three times I mentioned that my father played it for me deliberately, I was somewhat oblivious each time. I like the song. Still do. At 16, 19, and 25 years old respectively, one might think that I would have gotten the message during any one of those pivotal stages in life where one’s personality is distilled. And for each of those directed listenings, the preamble was much the same.

After a few drinks, a bit of revelry, the boss man would settle into a moment of introspective sentimentality. You have all seen this. When someone in the group has that energy and wants to share it. It’s a rare kindness that comes at random and nearly always when everyone in the group lacks the proper attention. Still, it’s beautiful when it comes by. And so, it did, each of these occasions with almost identical words.

“This song always makes me think of you.”

Today, I think I understood why.

It begins, “Every night I say a prayer, in the hopes that there’s a heaven.”

Perhaps, because of what I was listening to earlier (After the Nietzsche audio I moved on to Jung and the human search for meaning) I could feel why my father set this song upon me at 16. I must have seemed so lost then. A loner, always with friends but in shifting groups. Grades all well and good but wasting all my spare time in chemical frivolity. He was reaching out to tell me he saw me. Queue the refrain, “Show me the way”

Somewhere in the second verse, “take me tonight to the mountain and take my confusion away.”

19 years old, about to have a baby and still finding my way. Working full time, College full time. Scared out of my mind. Earlier that day on delivery, when confessing my fear of inadequacy as a father, he told me, “The hardest part about raising you was knowing what you were going to do, telling you what was going to happen and then having to watch you do it anyway.” Later that night, he once again played it for me. Because he knew. He saw. This time, I think he was praying for me. “Show me the Way”

Towards the end of the third refrain, “Give me the Strength and the courage to believe that I’ll get there someday.”

25. He had been my quiet guide all my life and my boss for half of it. I think it was one of those stretches where I was drinking too much. The immediate years after college were met with a large vacuum of time that I instinctually filled with stress and avoidance. A late-night feed had us all up cleaning and partying at the shop afterward and well past 1 am. The kind of hysteric catharsis only service workers have. And again, he offered up this song in the hope that I might find some solace. “Show me the Way”

These three times, and maybe it was intentional today as an impromptu fourth (without the drawing of attention to it). Yet, this time…. This time it was tangible. As I am a sucker for nostalgia, a piece of what now feels like a simpler life seemed like the way to go. Memory has a better filter than anything on Snapchat, after all. I hopped into the car, grateful for a smartphone’s ability to summon any melody I could dream up so I could listen before the mood subsided.

I am pretty sure that, from the outside, I looked like an outtake from Jerry Maguire. Wailing at a steering wheel like an ass. Thank you winter and your early sunsets for at least some cover. But there, in that second verse. Take my confusion away. All of this hit me. The last invisible gust to deliver the ship to shore. All my life, for all his stoicism, He only ever wanted for me to find my way. Just as I only ever want the same for my child. The tears weren’t unwelcome, nor was the lesson.

Sometimes, love is quiet strength at the sidelines. Unfettered if not unnoticed support. That is a thing you can trust. Thanks Dad.