Father's Day 2011

It’s Father’s Day and I figured a good way to deal with it would be a vigorous, sweaty, distracting yoga class. It was a good idea. We got to that last part, the relaxing, welcome part where you just let everything go. Sometimes it brings tears, sometimes laughter, sometimes just pure…“thank God that’s over.”

This time I was flooded with memories of my father. I couldn’t seem to settle on one. My eyes closed, my body limp, I pictured him on the golf course, in plaid pants, lanky and lean, flicking cigarette butts like Arnold Palmer. I pictured him smiling at Pete Fountain’s jazz club in New Orleans. I pictured the back of his handsome head driving the Country Squire station wagon out to Eastern Long Island, cigarette smoke floating around his head. I saw him staring at the Herb Alpert album cover with the whipped cream girl on the cover. I saw him landing in a small plane on Nantucket to spend a summer weekend with us. Him walking through the back den door after a long workday in the city, cheerfully roaring “greetings” to us all. I felt his fingers stroking through my hair, counting to a hundred, while I fell asleep as a little girl. I saw him in church, with his eyes closed, savoring that weekly one hour of peace. Dancing with my beautiful mother to “The Bells Are Ringing For Me and My Gal” as we watched from the stairs in awe.

I saw him on Christmas morning, full of pent up excitement, mixed in with a little hangover. Concocting a massive salad in his favorite salad bowl, artichoke hearts, roasted red peppers, plum tomatoes, gorgonzola, extra extra virgin olive oil. I saw him sitting in his favorite chair, the old leather reclining one. I saw him forever tapping his foot and slapping his knees at the best music ever. I saw him playing the snare drums, accompanying Count Basie. Sitting in his lap following the bouncing ball with Mitch Miller. Sipping a glass of wine, surveying his “estate” from the lawn chair overlooking the bay. I saw him being a good son to his mother, a good husband to my mother and a good brother to my uncle. I heard him belting out The Summer Wind and My Way. I smelled the Old Spice, the English Leather and the Aramis Devin.

These images came at me rapid fire and I couldn’t land on one. It was good thing I was lying down, my head was spinning. Couldn’t stop.

So I asked him. Simply. In my mind. “How do you want me to remember you, Dad?” Before I could complete the thought, there was one word that blew through my head. In his voice. Booming. Echoing. Reverberating. Definitive.

“Love,” he said.

“I want you to remember me as love.”