On Being...A Son

Until this year, I've never given a whole lot of thought, or effort, to Father's Day. My family never made much fuss over celebrations and holidays.

For his birthday my dad usually got new socks, underwear, and work clothes. My mom got new PF Flyers for her birthday because those were the most comfortable shoes she could wear while working as a cook at the local nursing home. Iowa farm families didn't have a large fashion repertoire in those days. Mom would buy Dad's gifts but Dad would flip a $10 bill from his billfold and ask me to go into Vicker's Department store to pick up the Flyers.

If that was the fuss we made for birthdays, imagine the excitement of Mother's Day or Father's Day at our house! As a result, I've never given much thought to these more minor holidays except as duty required.

This year was a bit different though. Tim Russert, a beloved and respected NBC newscaster, died only days before Father's Day. Throughout Father's Day weekend, and into the following week, there was extensive coverage of Russert's death, including a retelling of his own life story. The coverage by the media was inescapable - even rival networks carried extensive stories about Tim Russert.

It was in one of those stories that I heard Russert talk about his own father in a way that gave me a new appreciation for my dad. Russert's father was a sanitation worker and truck driver in Buffalo, New York. As I remember it, Russert expressed sincere appreciation and admiration for his father's willingness to allow him to venture beyond Buffalo and hope to attain more than his father's own life had allowed for him.

This got me thinking about my own dad. He was born in 1913 into a German immigrant farm family. Though I know embarrassingly little about his early life, I do know he learned how to work hard at an early age and the family apparently counted on his working. He left school after he completed the 8th grade to join the family farm full-time.

He continued to work my grandfather's farm for 40 years until Grandpa died in 1966, and then the farm became his. At the time of my grandfather's death my dad was 56 years old (two years older than I am today) and had lived every moment of his life in service to his father. Until the day his father died, he had not made any of his own career choices. It would have been so easy for him to have expected the same of me, his only son.

I remember the layout of my grandfather's farm, which would become my dad's farm, very clearly. A wire fence ran around the whole of the house and barn area, and another wire fence bisected the giant square, separating the house yard from the barn yard. There were only three gates that allowed access to the larger fenced area. One was a small, modestly ornate gate that opened to the house yard. Another was a wider, sturdy gate located behind the barn which was only occasionally used to load lifestock. The third was the wide, functional, main gate of the barn yard that was used for "every day" comings and goings on the farm. Unlike fences found in the city, these farm fences and gates were designed to prevent escape, not entry.

I remember as a child standing, sometimes with my dad, on the main barn yard gate just watching the world go by. That last statement makes it sound much more interesting and fast-paced than it really was. In fact, very little of the world went by our farm. An occasional car or truck would drive by. Sometimes the "traffic" consisted of a neighbor on a tractor, on horseback, on a bicycle, or, for real excitement, driving a herd of cattle or hogs between feedlots. The main gate, in the shade of a couple of large elm trees, was a particularly comfortable place to sit and ponder the world.

On one of those occasions when we sat together on that gate watching the world, it would have been so easy for my dad to say something like, "Tom, turn around and look at this barn yard and house. These, and the dreams and work they represent, are your life - today, tomorrow, for every day you take breath. It is mine today, but it will be yours when I'm gone. And I expect you to build upon what my father and I made of this farm and then, someday, pass it on to your son as it was passed on to me and to you."

That conversation never occurred. I'm not sure why it didn't and I'll never know. We just kept looking over the fence, into the greater world - such as it was then - beyond the gate.

Next Father's Day I will have a new reason to honor my dad. It may, in fact, be the single best reason I've ever had to honor my dad. He gave me the freedom to not only look over the gate, but beyond the gate and to eventually leave the confines of the farm. I have no idea if that was a conscious decision or not, or if it just seemed inevitable to him and not worth the fight. Either way, I was allowed to leave and to pursue my own dreams. This freedom was the greatest gift ever given to me by my father.

I have also come to learn that it is one of the greatest gifts any father can give his child. It is what I strive to give my son - some days more successfully than others. On those days when I struggle with myself to give my son the freedom my father gave me, I think of my own dad. I wonder what it must have been like for him to set me free. Was it made more difficult because he had no similar freedom from his father? Or did his own confinement to his father's dreams and wishes make it easier for him to loose me? Sadly, I'll never know.

Sometimes I also wonder what my dad would think about just how far off the farm I've traveled. When I lived in Central Iowa, only about 125 miles from my home town, my dad visited one time. He was excited to see that the Des Moines and Cedar Rapids television stations I watched were different from the ones he watched in Southeast Iowa. He was amazed that the those different stations would feature the same television shows he liked to watch on the same day of the week at the same time. He never could figure out how that happened and I finally gave up trying to explain simulcasting to him. It's probably a good thing he died before cable TV or the shock would have surely killed him!

No doubt my dad would have been amazed, and I'd like to think proud, of how far I've traveled from the farm. Today I get to watch my own son begin his journey from the "farm" I built. It is yet unclear where his travels will take him, but it is exciting and fascinating to watch and wonder. I expect that I will be no less amazed by his journey than my dad would be of mine. And I know I will be proud, too.

Thank you, Tim Russert, for giving me cause to think beyond the mostly negative images I have of my father to discover something good, rich, and worthy to cherish. Thank you, Dad, for letting me go and not confining me to the life I now know may have driven you to the bottle that took yours. Happy belated Father's Day!