A Father in his Day

My father was a father in the time before fathers jogged and took boys’ weekends and, even, God forbid, attended book club meetings. He was a father in a time when being a wage earner was a seven-day-a-week job. When a man did not take a day off because his wife was having a baby. When vacations were dictated by the company.

He came up in a deep-rooted family of Puritan and Protestant belief where work and family were paramount. Before we were born, my six sisters and I, he went to war and rarely spoke of it. He built the house we lived in, adding a room at a time. He worked two and three jobs to keep us in shoes. He put cardboard over the holes in his shoes. He drove us where we couldn’t walk. He lived in a world of eight women, and when my youngest sister married and the seven of us girls gathered for a picture, he raised his glass and said, “There is the reason I never had a hot shower in my life, there is the reason, I never got a phone call, or saw a TV show I wanted.” It was a moment of pride for him, the man who was a father in a time when ‘I love you’ was not spoken, it was demonstrated.

Family photos: My father with me and adding another room to the house.