You Can Call Me Al

Dateline - Sunday, August 8, 2010

77 years ago today my father was born. It was supposed to be a work day for me, but circumstances have created a solitary morning…one of which up to now I hadn’t looked at the date. August 8…my dad’s birthday.  I called my mom.  She was heading out the door to church and apparently ran back in to catch the phone - happy to hear my voice but on hers I could feel the crunch of the ticking clock. We acknowledged Al’s birthday and she went on with her day.  Left a message with sis…she is probably as unaware of today as I was.

This is my way of calling Al.

For the last 30 years I’ve said Happy Birthday in my own way to the man who I was only able to be near for 8 years of my life. I don’t have many memories of the life I had before he had to go. I don’t know if it’s one of those things where tragedy causes a reinvention and so much of your life gets lost or the fact that I was simply 8. 

I can remember a few things. I remember that he was huge. 6 foot 7 inches of man. Funniest when standing next to my 5’4” mom but way cool when I was carried in his arms. He always smelled good…being a man of his time who always left the house ready to meet the world. I can’t remember ever seeing him in a t-shirt…even mowing the lawn.

He was kind. He had an infectious laugh kind of burst into a room…it matched the voice that seemed to come from his toes. 

He had deep fears. He was afraid of communists and hippies. He distrusted teenagers of all kinds and didn’t have much patience for children…except for us. He had incredible patience for us though we were always dressed to warm because he didn’t want us to catch a cold and die.

He was a pastor. Not a full-time one…but one who served from calling. He experienced an old-fashioned conversion and never looked back. Studied for the ministry and spent the second half of his life speaking in small churches and loving people where he was invited. Found a small urban church that couldn’t afford him and spoke there whenever he was asked.

We never had a home church that I could recall…we were always on the road somewhere and I was always in the front pew watching my rock star dad. 

It was in preparation for the ministry that he met my mom. It was 1960. The dating was brief but somehow the engagement stretched until 1971 when my mother finally issued the ultimatum. Story is that within the first year he turned to my mom and said “this is great…we should have done this earlier”.  The man had stones…

The rest of my memories are really just stories and photographs my mind has put into home movies. There was bring your child to work day and I spent the day in the post office where he worked full time emptying and filling a single bag of mail or the times he would come home early enough for me to ride up and down the hallway wrapped around his leg or how cool it was to sit in his basement “study” and draw on his stationary with the red felt pens he used for notes. 

I remember having to wake him in the middle of stories because he worked so hard that he often fell asleep with me in his lap. He would tell me he wasn’t asleep - only resting his eyes.

I remember the last night he was in the living room. He felt good enough to come out and go through the slides he used in churches to show them the holy land. He was an expert on every detail though he had never left the midwest. It was his greatest attraction…a multi-media walk through an exotic land.

He got tired and couldn’t finish.

A few days later the ambulance came. He had gotten to spend his remaining days at home. Cancer had won the battle for his body but not his soul. I sat with my sister and could hear my mother crying in the next room. It was her tears that made me cry when she came into us.  I didn’t cry again until I was 20.

Then I cried for three days.

Now I cry every year on August 8

I cried today.

I want to honor my father. It’s quite a thing to grow up without one. For the most part you have to raise yourself…looking for shadows of manhood in other places to help you make sense of your own. I know he would have done anything to be there as I became the man I am. I know because I would do anything to remain here for my own sons. 

However, in so many ways he is here. It’s his laugh that comes bellowing from my lungs when I’m with people I love. I have his legs, his walk, his smile. Apparently, I’ve followed in a similar professional path. I don’t share his same fears…but I do have his ability to keep moving when fear or pain finds a place in my heart.

So…I guess you could say he has been here. I’ve worked hard to listen to his voice locked in my DNA. There has been many nights that I’ve asked him questions and heard a voice that sounds like mine - but taller and with wavy black hair.

So…Dad, thanks for being there for me all these years. I haven’t grown without scars…and there is a lot I’ve done that you probably wouldn’t have ever done…but you were always happy to sit with me and show me your soul.  It’s helped me become a man who loves deeply. Even during those seasons where I am grappling for someplace to stand…the man you are gives me the confidence that people will be better because I was there. 

I couldn’t have gotten here without you.

Happy Birthday.