February 2nd marked the nineteenth anniversary of the day my father lost his quick, furious battle with lung cancer. The occasion left me in a rare frame of mind, one where I wondered what my father, a John Wayne-loving, golf-playing, blue-collar machinist would have thought about the world today.
It took a walk back through my childhood, and the lessons my “man-box” Dad, who never wanted his wife (either my mother or his second wife) to work, and who provided for his family through hard work, had taught me, to help me realize he stepped out of it from time to time.
My Dad taught me to dance; in fact, my earliest memory is where I’m standing on his big brown shoes, myself in a nightgown as he got ready for a formal event. He wore a white t-shirt and brown dress pants, and he held my hands, singing a little tune to me as he taught me to dance.
You kiss your parents on the lips when you say hello and goodbye. The son of Scottish immigrants, my father kissed all of his children, sons and daughter, the same way. Hello, on the lips, goodbye, on the lips. It never occurred to him what anyone else thought about it, and I’m not sure he would have cared if it did. The brouhaha over Bill Belichick of the New England Patriots kissing his daughter on the lips would have made my dad scoff.
He taught me to read. I was three, and he looked up at my mother to tell her I was reading the newspaper along with him. Later, he’d share his love of Stephen King, Call of the Wild, and other classics. I still have his well-worn copies of It and The Stand. He valued higher education, despite the fact that he joined the Army instead of going to college, and he wanted all of us to have that same appreciation for it.
You kiss your parents on the lips when you say hello and goodbye. The son of Scottish immigrants, my father kissed all of his children, sons and daughter, the same way. Hello, on the lips, goodbye, on the lips. It never occurred to him what anyone else thought about it, and I’m not sure he would have cared if it did. The brouhaha over Bill Belichick of the New England Patriots kissing his daughter on the lips would have made my dad scoff.
Make the best of things. My Dad lost half his right ring finger one day at work. They tried to put it back on, but it didn’t take, and my father’s response to this was to tell me that finger was in the way of his golf grip, anyway. The bright side was a place both my parents tried to help us live.
Don’t like ads? Become a supporter and enjoy The Good Men Project ad free
Learning to take care of your money is a necessary life skill. My Dad, as a machinist, felt math was one of the most important skills to have. When I got my first job, he sat me down at his kitchen table and went through the 1040-EZ step by step with me, telling me it was important that I know how to do my own taxes each year. He didn’t want me to get married some day and not know how to take care of my own money.
Never spend a dollar when you can spend a dime. We call this thrifty in my family. My Dad wanted us to understand that we shouldn’t spend every penny we had in case we had an emergency someday. He used to give us the change from his toolbox every month after he cleaned it out. One week we asked him to take us to the comic book store to spend it. When we left the store and he realized the bags of change he’d been giving us were equal to about $120, we never saw that baggie full of quarters and nickels again.
Things are just things. Never mind Marie Kondo, my Dad always excelled at getting rid of things that didn’t bring him joy—or even if they brought someone more joy than him. Of course, this led to a few issues when he gave away things that brought other people in the house joy, or when he’d get a birthday gift and three weeks later would give it to a golfing partner.
A little effort to understand someone else never hurt anyone. My father’s machine shop had been bought out by a Japanese company at one point. I remember him playing a cassette tape in his car, learning how to say hello, thank you, have a good day in Japanese. He told me he’d learned a bit because he wanted to understand his new employers—not their speech, though that was helpful, but the people, and their culture. My father would not have understood why people trying to come into the country were any less important than the ones already here.
Things are just things. Never mind Marie Kondo, my Dad always excelled at getting rid of things that didn’t bring him joy—or even if they brought someone more joy than him. Of course, this led to a few issues when he gave away things that brought other people in the house joy, or when he’d get a birthday gift and three weeks later would give it to a golfing partner.
Patience is a virtue. Now, I’m not going to tell you that my Da was patient, and sometimes he was downright surly about waiting. But when it came to new movies, my father would make us wait in lines around the block to go see them. He’d tell us the movie would be worth it. (That was also when he taught us that you could be both a Star Wars and a Star Trek fan.) I imagine when discussing the current political climate, he’d say to wait it out.
And the last lesson my father taught me, as he woke in the middle of the night and said, “I’m ready”:
Take nothing for granted. When I was a child, my father took me to the Flying Horses carousel on Martha’s Vineyard, where you get a second (free) ride if only you could grasp the brass ring. My father died young, three months before his 60th birthday, and left me with the feeling I had missed out on so much. My entire view of the world changed—I began to reassess situations based on whether or not I would regret missing them tomorrow. Ultimately, this last lesson gave me the best he could give me: the idea that a long life isn’t guaranteed, and there’s no brass ring to give you a second ride.
S.M. Roffey is a writer, mother, former early educator, comic book lover, and volunteer cosplayer who lives in the Northeast with her genderqueer spouse and 3 LGBTQ kids. By day she is a virtual assistant to #RevPit’s Jeni Chappelle, and at night she writes adult fiction fantasy. She has studied Anthropology and Early Education, and her personal essays have been featured on The Good Men Project, Shethority, Huffington Post and BlogHer. She is currently writing a novel and blogging about books and writing at www.smroffey.com.
