Archive Features:
For 10 Father’s Days in a row we bought you white size 11 Nikes with a
blue swoosh. The following three years we inundated you with James Taylor
recordings. The year after that was a laughing checkbook which you may have
liked the best.
It is Father’s Day again and I have finally learned the value of a
thoughtful present, so here goes:
It has been some time since I saw you. I miss so much about you, but what I
miss most are the things that never happened. I miss how we would have sat
around in your sunken den watching March Madness basketball and Super Bowl
Sunday. A game is never a quiet affair for the Suder clan and much story
interrupting and needless screaming would have occurred between the chewing
of pretzel sticks like giant cigars.
I miss your steaks. We didn’t have any money those days but when you cooked,
you always bought the best; and how you cooked.
My mouth waters at the thought of entire onions soaked all day in vinegar
and oil; the double jeopardy of hotdogs wrapped in bacon; the rivaling
textures of lupini beans and pretzel nubs; pork and beans with huge globules
of fat to flavor things up; kabobs with tender lamb and tomatoes like
rubies; giant bowls of fudge chocolate ripple ice cream.
(My kids miss it too. Genetics gave them a mom who cooks like your wife did.
No labor of love to be sure—you know the routine: spaghetti Monday, Rice-a-Roni
Tuesday, taco salad Wednesday, and blah blah blah.)
My husband misses you. He never met you, but he knows what your death did to
our family.
He sees me frantically searching the Internet while self-diagnosing every
catastrophe from cancer to the croup. He senses how scared we are at the
beach, on a plane, changing lanes, on vacation, with our kids. Fear born of
having someone you know die young and the fear of having it happen again. He
works with my brother who can barely keep his head above water because he’s
drowning in drink and the desire for someone to be a dad to him.
My son Beau misses you. You met but for a moment in the span of things. He
was nine months old and had just learned to stand when you died. You were a
grown man over six feet tall in diapers; in the last few weeks before you
died, all you could do was fall.
Beau fell into sports naturally and even if he hadn’t, I fear we might have
pushed him to. Every piece of advice I gave him, every time I hiked the ball
to him, every time I caught his throw in my mitt, I thought of you. I heard
your voice in my mouth.
But I don’t have half the charisma you did. You made mediocre teams win. You
made small teams seem big. You made boys seem like men on a basketball
court.
And then there’s D. He is your youngest grandson and may be your last. He
never met you but he can point you out in a picture. It’s uncanny: no matter
the picture, no matter the age, from your youth clear through to 50, he
knows when it’s you.
He knows you’re not here, but heaven is a concept like delicious broccoli,
unfathomable to him.
He’s your spitting image. You might have different cheekbones or his nose
might be a bit small, but something about his being just screams “George.”
He turns heads already. He’s handsome and clever with a twinkle of the
mischievous in his eye— but the kind that people laugh off and say, “Boys
will be boys.”
He has friends everywhere at age 5—people in line at the bank, the grumpy
school custodian, the librarian who never smiles, the lifeguards at the
pool, the cart boys at the local grocery store.
Whatever it is that people got…he’s got it. Unfortunately, he will never see
you in action, and I’m a pale imitation of your personality at work.
What I really want to say, Dad, is that we all miss you.
There’s no way to get around the sentimental drivel; missing someone sounds
like a Hallmark card.
So, Happy Father’s Day. I never forget that the only present I have for you
now that you are gone is to remember you. I do, all the time.
Rebecca Suder is chief bread baker, joke maker, nap taker and baby waker at the Suder, Crabtree, Banks residence and sometimes wonders how she ended up with sixty thousand dollars in student loans and no actual income as of yet.