I almost didn’t write about Father’s Day, but here I am.
After all, nobody could really blame me. If Mother’s Day is the spectacular fireworks show over the Hudson River in New York City, Father’s Day is a bottle rocket shot off in the backyard.
This week was more hectic than most for me, so here I am on deadline with about an hour to write my column. Anyone would be crazy to try to write a decent ode to her dad in that short time. Oh, well. I’ve been called worse.
When I went to bed, I was thinking about what I could write, hoping my brain would come up with something brilliant overnight. (It was asleep on the job.)
I love my mom and dad’s little story of how they met.
Although they’d had one date a couple of years earlier, my mom starting dating my dad seriously after they struck up a conversation at the A&W drive-in in Piggott when she got in his car to talk to him. She was the city girl from Piggott; he was the country boy from Greenway.
Lucky for me, they hit it off.
Poor dad. He is the most humble man I know — reserved, low-maintenance and steady. And here I am — a credit-claiming, loudmouth, high-maintenance, sometimes histrionic ham. Bless him.
Did I mention that he’s private? And he has a daughter whose life is an open book, put out here for everybody to see?
He also is hilarious. When I got too big for my britches growing up, he simply called me Queenie. Message received. Once he kidnapped my Cabbage Patch doll and left a ransom note, which I still have. When I was in college, my boyfriends got nicknames — Meathead, Mr. Rogers, Snake and Lanky Lover. (Not to their faces, mind you.)
Dad’s the quiet one in the corner who comes up with a one-liner that cracks up everybody in the room.
I have never heard him raise his voice. I’m not sure he’s capable of it. Not even when I backed into his truck in the driveway. His method of discipline with me when I was young was to lean a yardstick in the corner of my bedroom and tell me to think about what I’d done. That makes me laugh now, but it worked. I never felt the sting of a yardstick (a rare fly-swatter slap by Mom — yes.)
When I was thinking about what my dad has taught me, several things came to mind. “Look down the road” was a phrase I heard a lot when I was having drama, meaning don’t get caught up in what’s happening now. He is not a lecturer. He just leads by example, and what a great example.
I didn’t learn as much as I should from him. I regret not working with him in the big garden he used to plant, which I didn’t appreciate until much later in life. He is a wonderful cook; I can’t cook a lick.
But I chose to marry a guy who can cook, and who is kind and funny and supports me in everything I do — and is a great father.
That’s the most important thing I learned from my dad.
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.