Dad

My dad turns 78 later this year. He and my mom made the trip from Madison to Rochester this weekend. They accepted our invitation to attend the combined graduation celebrations for their two granddaughters who have now finished high school and college. I had several opportunities to watch my father from across the table or across the room. As I looked into his blue eyes and listened to his kind words, I found myself reflecting on memories that had left permanent marks on my life. These are among the countless ways that my dad will forever be part of me, besides the DNA segments he left in every one of my cells.

My dad taught me to make models. Plastic or balsa wood, cars or airplanes, modern or vintage, he showed me what I needed to know. Dad had grown up on a farm and learned to fly light planes. He was good at teaching. Two model memories have stuck with me all these years. As a young boy, my dad bought me a model car. It was a metal model of a classic Ford convertible. There were plenty of parts and long instructions. It seemed daunting for a little kid like me. Even more amazing, the kit called for the parts to be assembled once to assure that everything fit and was accounted for, then the kit was disassembled and the parts were painted and put back together again. This was my first memorable lesson in patience. After supper we would spend time together on the model. Even when we had it together, I understood that all the screws were coming back out and the pieces were returned to the table for painting. When the car was finally done, it was beautiful. That model became an object lesson—doing something right may mean starting over, sometimes on purpose.

It was another model that taught me a different life lesson, and it was again my dad who was responsible. I was older and working alone in the basement on a large model glider, gluing wing spars and ribs over flat plans covered with saran wrap. After hours of work on one large wing I experienced that sinking feeling when I realized that I had used a thin balsa strip for the leading edge. The plans called for a thicker, sturdier wood piece but I missed that detail. Every one of the two dozen ribs was now improperly glued in place. I stared at the error. Eventually I called my dad to come downstairs and I confessed the problem. He looked at the wing and he looked at the plan and he looked at me.

“The wing will probably hold up alright even with the wrong piece. Nobody else will probably ever be able to figure out that there is a problem” he said. “But you will always know that there was a mistake and it could have been done better.”

There was no accusation or shaming in his words—just the observations of a wise father. When he had walked back up the basement stairs, I picked up my X-ACTO knife and carefully trimmed away all the glue, spending another hour replacing the leading edge strip with the proper strong wood piece.

I have told that story dozens of times to PhD students through the years.

As I watched my dad across the room at the busy graduation reception, I sensed that he felt out of place. He knew practically nobody in the house. I wanted to stroll over and talk with him, but I was surrounded by my friends and the parents of my daughter’s classmates. I contented myself with glancing at my dad every few minutes.

It reminded me of a memory from many years before when I had been able to observe my dad without him knowing it. Dad’s career was as a geology professor at the University of Wisconsin- Madison. When I decided to attend college there, I knew that my biology major would probably never make me a student in one of my dad’s classes. In spite of that, my curiosity ended up getting the better of me. Early in my second year I decided to sneak into one of dad’s lectures to see what it was like. Dad taught an introductory geology course (he jokingly called it “rocks for jocks”) and there were probably 200 students in the lecture hall. This gave me good cover, and I snuck in and sat in back. For the next 50 minutes I was completely stunned. My mild-mannered and quiet father was an entirely different character in front of an undergraduate class. He was quick-witted, dramatic, funny, probing, engaging—a dynamo on a stage. In fact, he was a ham. At one point in the lecture I found myself sliding down in my seat, wanting to be sure that he didn’t see me in the back. I had the terrible feeling that the magic would end if he found that he was being watched by a spy from his own family.

I never thought about my dad the same way after that day I saw him teach. I came to realize that he had a gift, probably from his mother’s side, and he had shared that gift with us kids. I often find myself thinking of him in those quiet moments just before I deliver a lecture or an invited presentation.

A poignant and meaningful echo of this stealth lecture experience came years later when the three of us kids learned that dad was retiring and would be delivering the very last college lecture of his career. We drove to Madison from different locations across the country, and agreed not to let dad know that we would attend the lecture. It was the same hall where I had snuck in to watch my father teach many years before. My brother and sister joined me outside the room, knowing that my dad would pass by before class began. We talked about our childhood memories, and we tried not to appear too out of place among the waiting students with ipods and cell phones. It was well worth the trip when we saw my dad’s eyes open wide in amazement as we stood up to hug him in the hall before class. He had no idea we were going to attend. We sat in back of the crowded lecture and listened to dad go over the review material for the final exam. At one point in the class he climbed up to stand on top of the lecture table to make a point. My sister gave me a glance of disbelief, but I just winked to her—I had seen this kind of behavior once before, a long time ago. Near the end of the lecture my dad paused and looked out at the hall full of students. To them it probably seemed like just one more in an endless series of college classes at a major state university.

“Before we finish, I wanted to take a moment to thank my three children for coming to surprise me today.” He gestured in our direction. “It means a great deal to me that they are here, because this is my very last lecture before retirement.”

As the students looked in our direction, my first instinct was to slide down in my seat, as I had done once years before, not wanting to be detected. Instead, I smiled proudly as the class broke into applause for my father.

My dad and mom waved as they drove out of the driveway after the graduation party this weekend. He’ll be 78 this winter. In some ways we spend precious little time together.

In other ways I realize that we’re never really apart.

5.30.11