Father’s Day

I was telling the story the other day.

The year was 1983.

I was a union laborer working at the Hotel Meridien in San Francisco. My primary task that summer was as a member of the concrete crew as we poured 47 stories worth of concrete.

Day after day.

The first concrete truck would arrive at 6 a.m., Dad, John and I rode into work together.

“There’s your breakfast,” Dad said to me, one morning.

I groaned.

“It’s a good job,” he said. “I got it for you to show you what you don’t want to do for the next thirty years.”

“I actually like it,” I said. “But I get hungry. We start pouring by 6:30 and we don’t stop until the last truck leaves, which is usually around 2:00. I’m starving by then.”

Dad didn’t say anything.

That day started like so many others. Sweating profusely, muscles sore from hard labor, concrete flowing...

...one truck after another.

Then, around 11:00 I heard my Dad’s voice:

“Cliff!”

I turned to see him there in his suit and tie, and hard hat.

Everyone in the crew of twenty turned to look at him. He was THE BOSS. We were just the grunts.

I headed to him and he pulled a sandwich, wrapped in tin foil, from behind his back.

“Sausage, eggs and hot peppers,” he said.

“I can’t eat that,” I said. “No one else on the crew has eaten.”

“No one else on the crew is my son,” he said. “Get behind the column and eat it.”

That was my Dad.

He did those sorts of things all the time, for all his kids.

As a Dad, I try my best to do the same sort of things for my boys.

Dad also told me something else that I never, ever forgot.

“When you get married, you become 50% about you and 50% about your spouse. With each kid you lose a little more of the 50% that used to be all about you.” 

He laughed.

“I got about 3% of me left.”

He lived his life that way.

I think about his last Father’s Day a lot.

We went out to give him a gift.

The kids were getting restless in the car as we were ready to go.

 

“Wait! Wait!!” He yelled.

I put the car in park. We waited.

He came out of the house with a can of anchovies.

“Happy Father’s Day, buddy,” he said.

We shared a love of anchovies. 

We shared a whole lot of life.

Happy Father’s Day, Pop.

Also, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention my father-in-law, John Foutz. He’s had a hard, hard year, but a couple of weeks ago, at a funeral parlor (of all places), he and I had a great conversation about life and love and loss and working hard.

Same sort of guy as my Dad...

...and that’s a lot to live up to.