A Christmas Letter to my Dad

Dear Dad:

It seems strange to write a letter to you like this. I mean, you’ve been gone now for the last two Christmases--this will be the third since you passed--and in many ways, life has moved on...as you told me it would, years ago. It's also strange to write this because you and I wrote each other very little.

And yet, tonight after Deena had gone to bed early, and I was wrapping the Christmas gifts, I found myself thinking of you. 

It still seems strange sometimes to go back home and not see you there. (Though there is a nice comfy chair there you’d love, I’m sure.) It’s really hard this time of year; I remember all the years you took pictures of us kids at the top of the stairs...and the year we all beat you to it. That flash had to be visible for a three mile radius! I remember bit and pieces from both birthdays and Christmases past: The 100 in 1 electronic kit, the Starfleet Academy manual (and Enterprise blueprints), and all the LEGO are still in my possession. (As well as more electronics, Star Trek books, and even LEGO than I ever thought I’d own in a lifetime.) Making stuffing, and having you taste it. Trips to Helen and Louie’s in the motor home. (Or, as Amy put it, “Barbie’s Dream Home.”) 

I’ve tried to hold up my end of the bargain. I promised to be a good son and watch Mom for you. I’ve tried to keep an eye on Mom without being a pest. You’d be proud of her; she gets around pretty good these days. She’s active enough, gets out of the house, and drives. She flies on her own, too. 

When we went to the Big Island, we had a GPS you’d have laughed at. My little unit butchered every Hawai’ian name. We all still laugh about it. (That, and trying to find Diamond Lil’s in Salt Lake City.) 

I’m still helping clean up the house as well...I’m going to want to discuss with you some of the more interesting findings. For example, I know you knew nobody was using serial bus ports on computers; USB connections work so much better. So why were there, what--a half dozen or so?--adaptors for serial busses? Plus the cables? 

I don’t even want to know why there were hundreds of 5 1/4 inch floppies. I do want to know where you hid the slides. Part of my early life is on those, and I’d really like to rediscover part of that. 

So many things. I know all the medals you earned in the Navy. I wish I knew how you earned them all. You never really talked about them, or much else of you Navy time. I understand why as a vet myself. I also never knew you cared much for baseball, much less were a Yankees fan. I know you never totally understood my tastes in music. (That’s okay...I never totally understood yours, either.) But you did instill a love of good music, which means I’ll never like rap. 

I also know you never could quite figure out what I saw in some of the girls I dated. That’s cool; you weren’t dating them...I was. You and Mom taught me to look past certain things, and see the person inside. I learned to see certain qualities I knew you and Mom didn’t see. That’s okay too. (I’m still trying to get the “being a good husband” thing down as well, and I am wondering if I’ll ever get it right. Even approaching 19 years of marriage--after 4 years of dating on top of that--I’m still trying to get things right.)

You’ve missed seeing me with the quartet. We have fun, and we do reasonably well. (We are getting better every week.) You watched me compete with barbershop choruses at all levels, yet due to work/guests from out of town (I don’t remember which) missed the only Command Performance I ever had in both intermediate and high school. That was hard for me to understand at the time. There were other things I never understood: how you could solve algebra in your head, and I couldn’t get the same answer twice. (And then there was the time I got one answer, you had another, the book had a third...and my instructor got a fourth answer and none of them matched.)

I remember when you told us as a family we might have a chance to live in Europe while you would be in the Middle East. As much as the education I would have gotten would have been a benefit, given the way things have turned out in the Middle East, it’s better that deal fell through.

You taught me to honor my commitments, even when not a pleasant thing to do. I guess that’s part of what pulled my butt through Moody and TEDS: I made a commitment, and by gar I wasn’t gonna quit. (No matter how badly I wanted to turn tail and run.) 

You taught me how to change a tire, spark plugs, headlights and taillights, several wiring harnesses, my own oil and oil filter, and the fuel filter. These days, I’m lucky if I can find the latch to open the hood. Changing my own oil is out of the question...no place to dump it. You also taught me to use the right tool for the job. 

In some ways, that’s a lesson I’m still learning; again this year I cut the wrapping paper for the gifts with my Swiss Army Knife. (Some things never change.) You’d have been proud of me. Yes, I still have a knife that weighs a ton. But hey--I’ve carried Swiss steel since 1976-77ish. Why stop now? 

As much as I miss you, though...I wouldn’t dream of asking you to come back here, even for a minute so I could say goodbye properly. Not only have you earned your rest, I couldn’t be that selfish to take you away from the presence of God Himself. 

And that brings me back to Christmas, and wrapping gifts. Yes, we celebrate the birth of Jesus this time of year. Knowing you’re with Him has helped--and continues to help--me deal with the fact you’re not going to be home for Christmas. It’s been hard to not find you something. I miss sending you e-mails and swapping jokes and puns. 

Mostly, though...I just miss you.

I’d better sign off now. It’s late, and I need to get some sleep. Give my love to everyone there. 

Love,

Matthew

On Sorting Through Stuff

This last week I spent at my boyhood home, sorting through a bunch of stuff that represents a lot of Mom’s life. (Mom is fine, so no worries there.) There was stuff in the upstairs attic, garage rafters, and the back of the shed (and no, 99.97 percent of it wasn’t mine). It’s my Dad’s stuff, mostly, some of it Mom’s, a little each of both my sisters, and oddly enough, some stuff from the missus that she didn’t even know was up there. It was quite a lot--we filled 10 yards of a 20 yard dumpster, and the Salvation Army wound up filling what appeared to be a quarter of a truckload. Not bad for three days work.

A bit o’ ancient history: way back when I was in high school, back in the early 1980’s, I was called by several names (most of which are unprintable; I’d like to keep this blog somewhat family friendly). One of those was “Packrat.” I earned that because I carried a backpack to all my classes. In those days, you could and nobody cared. Nowadays, they search them for things. My, how times have changed...but, I digress. I carried my ‘pack because my locker was smack in the middle of “D” wing (D1214, to be precise), and I knew I couldn’t get to it, into and out of it, and to my classes on time. You just can’t stretch five minutes into eight, no matter how good you are.

The fact I collected all manner of junk...excuse me, really cool stuff...was a secondary issue. Or, so I thought.

So, why bring up ancient history? Because of what was unearthed.

Thongs like old magazines. Stuff from Blue Devils (Yes, all three of us kids were in the Concord Blue Devils. My two sisters were both in the “A” Corps, and I was in both Cadets (now “C” corps) and “B” Corps) and the CVHS marching band. More old magazines. Office stuff from what appears to be Dad’s last five offices. Computer stuff that dates backs to our first few home computers. (I found some tapes from the TRS-80 we had when I was still called Packrat, as well as a template for planning programs, plus about two years of 80Micro. If you had a TRS-80, you know what that is.) Even more old magazines. Stuff that was from my Mom’s mother. And her Aunt. And her Cousin. Stuff my one sister created in college. (Both my sisters are disgustingly artistically talented.) Effects from when I was in Y-Indian guides. (Told you this stuff was old!) Styrofoam that fit monitors long gone. Foam peanuts. Newspapers that discuss Kennedy’s assassination AND the 1976 US Bicentennial. Yet more old magazines. Engineering books, and a fair number of them.

Now, to be fair, I have my own share of junk in storage. (George Carlin was right--Dad had some real junk, but I have some really cool stuff.) Roughly forty percent of my library is in small-sized cedar tubs. I have several boxes of stuff that frankly needs sorting and either pitching, donating, or putting aside until I can file it, use it, or put it on a wall. The vast majority of the LEGO, Star Trek items, and a lot of my Barbershop stuff is also in tubs. More back issues of Discipleship Journal, The Harmonizer, Animerica Magazine (and Animerica Plus as well), and Star Trek: The Magazine than is possibly safe to admit to. (Plus some old Manga, in issue form.) So you know I come by this honestly, and it seems to have come from from my Great-Grandmother, through Grandfather Crandall, to Dad...and thus, to me.

The biggest difference, however, is that I have already gotten rid of a lot of stuff. (Don’t believe me? Ask the missus.) And, as I have time (probably in the waiting times for each of my dissertation components) I am going to have go through and get rid of more of it. It’s not that it’s junk (although some of it is).

It’s because I don’t want the missus to have to sort through it all later on.

Enough for now.

(Posted 6/8/09)