FATHER'S DAY--DO AS I DO

June 18th. A day that shall, for me, live in both infamy and honor. This year the date is Father's Day, and the date, in 2014, was my father's death.

I've only had one father so I can't really say if father/son relationships are all pretty much the same as mine, but I hope for those of you out there that yours is or was. I can truthfully say that in the couple of times I have been asked if I have a role model, I have never hesitated: Bill Payne was it.

Dad passed up job advancements to be with the family; he attended almost every sporting event I was in, including intramural; he backed some decisions of mine I knew he would have rather seen go another way. Dad remained married to my mother for 76 years, and all that time I never heard the man swear (No connection between the two.)

I don't mean this to be your reading how great my father was. I would image many of you could say the same, or maybe your dad could make my dad look like Negan from The Walking Dead. I just want to stress the dad-as-role-model concept.

This wonderful dad I am describing never in his life told me he loved me. I never missed it. He showed me with every action, every day. My mother was equally as forthcoming with the, "I love you's," (as I have been told, am I) but I never had a doubt about how either of them felt about me, my brother or each other. They lived their lives according to their principles, and much to the chagrin of two boys, never varied. ( Dad was a high ranking police official in Chicago and to keep a clean record in those days required a man of principle and a man who would never do anything to embarrass his family or offend his God.)

On this Father's day maybe we fathers could, after opening up our present of Soap-On-A-Rope, examine our relationships with our children. With some of us, it may be a little late to do much about it, but to whatever degree we can affect it, affect it. Do we want our children to do what we do? When they have a tough decision to make, would they ask themselves WWDD (What Would Dad Do), or is all they have of you the fact that you say, "Love ya" when you hung up the phone?

This world is changing daily. Our experiences when we were our children's age is dinosaur time. We can't give specific direction on how to act in specific cases because those cases will have changed by the time dear old dad puts together a coherent sentence. Having lived with you for possibly eighteen plus years, and your children are looking for direction in the midst of turmoil, would they ask themselves how often they were told they were loved, or how often they were shown they were loved. Then they can ask and answer WWDD.

Dad died a couple of months short of 104 so his death was not unexpected. The "crowd" at his wake was very sparse. (All of his friends were on the "other side" waiting and wondering where he was.) I was one of the last to say my good-bye's and was holding myself together very well I thought. That didn't last long. I looked back to see one last person, a man in his late 80s who had worked for dad, standing alone next to the coffin presenting as sharp a salute as I had ever seen. Maybe I was not the only person to whom dad was a role model.

MATH OF LIFE

A very good friend of mine died yesterday. It was sudden. I wasn't ready for it. I don't cultivate many friends, so I really can't afford to lose any. His death reminded me of something I had written a few years ago. It’s now pretty obvious what phase I am in.

                                                               MATH OF LIFE

 It is said there are only three kinds of people in this world; those who are good at math and those who aren’t. I happen to be one of the latter, so it is a bit surprising that I have come to look at life in terms of mathematics, but I guess that’s just how it adds up, go figure. I believe in four phases of life: addition, multiplication, division, and subtraction. Here is what I mean:

 ADDITION We come into life with nothing, no clothes, no name, no bowel control—nothing, a blank slate. Then we meet and add our parents, brothers, and sisters, Aunt Rosie and Uncle Horace and Rover the dog. Then we add clothes, a name, and the all so advantageous bowel control. During this period of addition, our muscles develop strength and coordination, and our brains go into high gear allowing us to engage in life skills like eating, walking, talking. We add a personality, we add friends, teachers, classmates. We learn to deal with different types of people and, to the best any of us can relate to the opposite sex. In the addition phase, we add to that mass of living protoplasm that was us all we need to be a functioning, contributing human being. Addition takes us from nothing and provides us with the basics we require to become the person we are.

 MULTIPLICATION Now we are all ready to go but realize we don’t wish to go it alone, so we multiply what is us by bringing in a spouse, partner, significant other, mate, etc. and if that other person is physically capable of multiplying, from one comes many. Then comes the inevitable--house, cars and various jobs, careers and the new people associated with them. Your children now have friends who have parents you get to know and with whom you interact. Your life circle is multiplying every day. Your social life is full of weddings, birth announcements, and work parties. Multiplication widens our circle and provides us with supplementary tools to fine tune a productive life.

 DIVISION God, in his wisdom, has made it that children don’t stay around forever. They go, taking their friends and the weddings and births along with them. There may even be a divorce or separation from the partner, significant other, or mate. In this division phase, you may separate from your job. The long anticipated retirement is at hand. You disconnect from your coworkers and may even disconnect from your home geography to make winters more palatable to your brittle bones. Division tweaks the necessities of what you want out of your life. You begin to circle the wagons.

SUBTRACTION Life has given us the opportunity to live our potential in the addition and multiplication phases and helped us scale down during the division stage. Now it appears to be “give back” time. We lose family members and friends. (This is not as hard as it sounds because we also begin to lose memory and comprehension.) Our skin and muscle tone, reaction time, patience, eyesight and hearing are not what they used to be. Our basic skills like eating, walking, talking take a beating. Overall health heads slowly south and here it is again that damn bowel control thing! In subtraction, we find ourselves circling one wagon.

 Of course, these four stages do not often appear separately. They can, and most often do, occur simultaneously. (You could add a caregiver while your health is subtracting.) We may all experience these events to one degree or another in these fascinating times between birth and death. Something we need to remember is not to wait to experience our potential or our dreams until the subtraction phase. We will be much too busy trying to remember what we had for lunch.