My father made a lot of things. When I was only three years old and almost too young to remember, he built a barrel for me to play with. He took an old cask for aging scotch, spent hours and hours scraping out all of the charcoal from the inside, and then painted it a glossy red white and blue. It was a car. It was a cave. It was a jail cell. It was a giant’s thimble. It was fun! What a simple concept it was, and yet an epic toy for a three year old.
My childhood was filled with projects like that. I participated in some. Others I just benefitted from: bunk beds, footlockers, model rockets, swing sets, small gasoline engines… even the occasional soldering project.
When my parents built the second floor addition to their house, I remember him up on the roof, right among the workers, hammering here and there, and making sure that they were implementing everything according to specification.
And when it came to specification, he was always so prepared. Every “t” was crossed. Every “i” dotted, and every line was drawn both straight and at perfect angles. It always seemed to me like his project plans were unassailable; like great stone mountains wrought from pure logic.
He put a lot of stock in being logical and rational, and if you only knew him in passing, you might even think that that’s what drove him.
But it wasn’t.
In fact, underneath those mountains of knowledge was a wellspring of emotion. And every once in awhile you’d see it. He loved to sing ballads and recite epic poetry, and you’d glimpse that sweet water surging just beneath the surface when his voice would catch on a poignant lyric or a quaver in a sad verse.
That reservoir was vast and it was filled with love. He loved his family. He loved his country. He loved his state. He loved his city. He loved the people he surrounded himself with. And that’s why for all the things that he built, he wasn’t half as happy as when he was building them with someone.
It was never “I’m going to make something”, but rather “Let’s make something together” Whatever the something was, you found that basic equation of generosity in everything he loved to do: reading, traveling, camping, cooking, fishing, hunting, canoeing, ukulele-playing, bee-keeping. He shared with us in all of them.
My point is that whenever he did things like sing, or recite poetry, it wasn’t so that he could be the center of attention (though he often was). It was so that he could sing with, not to; recite for, not at. His aim was always to increase the total fun, and to build joy with the people he was around. And build it he always did. He built joy. He built trust. He built love. He built relationships. He built things forged from emotion that were every bit as strong and resilient as the things that he made with his hands.
That unvarnished enthusiasm he had to learn, to build, and to share in those experiences with anyone up for the adventure? That was his lust for life, and it remained so strong in him up until the very end that many of us just assumed he would live forever.
On the morning he died, he said to me “Charles. I want to stay. I really do… but I can’t.”
And given his druthers, he would’ve stuck around. But not because he was afraid of dying. Not at all. He wanted to stick around because of the deep and genuine happiness that he derived from being with us, and making and sharing new things with us every day.
I really wanted him to stick around too. We all did. But he couldn’t.
And so now I’m doing the only thing that can be done. I’m committing myself to take all of those human things that we built together not only as remembrance, but also as inspiration; inspiration for the best way for people to be with their world and with each other.
I didn’t want to say goodbye to you Dad, but it seems the universe hasn’t left me with any other choice.
I will always miss you. You were beautiful, and you made so many beautiful things.
