It can’t have been easy for my father, being a part of our family. He was, for many years, the only man in a matriarchy of headstrong women: my mother had two sisters, and their mother had two sisters; on Dad’s side, among his five siblings, he was close to (you guessed it) two sisters. When I was growing up, most of these sisters were either divorced or widowed. Mom and Dad, in turn, had two daughters, both who came out of the womb wanting to dress like Wonder Woman for Halloween. We had a lot of women in our family who were perfectly capable of taking care of themselves.
A word of clarification here: my father, by the way, is Superman. He can fix any piece of equipment from a rototiller to a Mack truck; can walk through a yard and identify every single plant growing there, from the choking Japanese bittersweet vines to the black dragon lily you had no idea could even survive in Connecticut, much less who the heck planted it there; he makes his own sausage and builds his own sheds. He once gave a Ford Explorer three extra years of life by replacing a metal plate in the back end with what looked suspiciously like an old pie plate.
So imagine this man among a family of women who could take care of themselves, thankyouverymuch. What’s a superhero to do?
If you’re my dad, you adjust your cape and teach.
So, okay. My sister and I can replace our car batteries and take care of a garden from sowing to reaping and strip and paint rooms with ease. Both our parents raised us with the mentality of “if it needs to get done, roll up your sleeves and do it.” But there are some things we need guidance with. Like when my water heater gave up the ghost last winter. I suspected I shouldn’t pay a plumber/electrician to install a new one. But I also knew it wasn’t a one-Longo job. So I called Dad.
After some good-natured grumbling (as he gets older, he sometimes points out his cape is getting a bit tired) Dad came over with his tool chest. As he measured, eyeballing connector hoses and pipes, inspecting gaskets and screws, he patiently explained everything he was doing. “This fitting’s got a slow leak. See it there? We’ll need to pick up a new one. And an elbow joint. Just in case.” We headed off to Home Depot, where we stared at tanks while Dad enumerated the many benefits and flaws of the average warranty. (I’ll admit I hadn’t thought to look at this closely, but since this was the second water heater I’d needed in a decade, when he told me to check to see if the warranty covered high iron content in the water, I did.) Unfortunately, this Home Depot didn’t have the tank size I needed: Papa Bear and I needed to drive to Manchester, which in actuality was only, say, twenty-five miles from where we were, but to hear the way Dad was talking, might as well have been halfway across the country. (“We have to go on the highway? There goes the afternoon!”) We made it just fine, found the right tank, and headed home.
As mentioned, this was not the first water tank I’ve had to replace, so when we got back to my basement, Dad realized I’d already heard and mastered some of these lessons (soldering, for instance, has become old hat). He looked a little ... sad. Like maybe there was nothing left to teach.
I hated seeing him so blue. After all, this was the man who’d carefully explained the difference between artificially inseminating a cow versus a sow, in case his daughters ever found themselves in a situation where this information might mean the difference between life and death. (No, I can’t imagine what that situation would be, but it was an interesting lecture just the same.) Here he was, probably wondering if his work molding us into self-sufficient adults might be done. If it was time to retire the cape.
I couldn’t let that happen. I tried to think of something Dad had yet to impart knowledge on. Financial investing? No, he’d covered that pretty thoroughly. How to skin a deer? Check. How to properly sharpen a scythe? We’d gone over that last summer.
But there was one topic—one thing his daughters have never grasped his views on, though he’s espoused on it time and time again over the years. One lone subject in which my father has continued to be unsuccessful in showing his kids why he’s right, and we’re wrong.
He looked so sad, sitting there, pipe wrench in hand, blinking at the (slightly messy, but still sufficient) soldering job I’d just finished. I had to take one for the team. I heaved a sigh and straightened my shoulders.
“So, how about that election?” I asked.
Dad’s whole face brightened. His cheeks flushed as he began to wax poetic on why, for the sake of all things reasonable, Republican politics just made more sense. I sat, gritting my teeth into a smile. The reds and blues of his superhero outfit seemed to shine with renewed purpose as he explained trickle-down economics. His cape waved in a nonexistent breeze as he detailed how the Affordable Care Act was failing. Tears glistened in his eyes as he debated the existence of global warming.
I had tears in my eyes, too (for very different reasons). My inner Wonder Woman was railing to bring up pictures of drowning polar bears and shrinking ice caps on my phone. But this was my dad. He’d spent all day driving across two towns to help me find a dependable water heater with a decent warranty. He wasn’t going to let his daughter go without hot water, no matter how much of a pain it was to unhook and roll out the old heater. He loves me, Republican or no.
And I love him, too. Republican or no. I settled in for a lecture on how school vouchers reflect all that is right with free market economics, deciding now was not the time to remind him both his wife and his eldest daughter were public school teachers. He was happy. That was all that mattered.
Happy Father’s Day, Dad!
A word of clarification here: my father, by the way, is Superman. He can fix any piece of equipment from a rototiller to a Mack truck; can walk through a yard and identify every single plant growing there, from the choking Japanese bittersweet vines to the black dragon lily you had no idea could even survive in Connecticut, much less who the heck planted it there; he makes his own sausage and builds his own sheds. He once gave a Ford Explorer three extra years of life by replacing a metal plate in the back end with what looked suspiciously like an old pie plate.
So imagine this man among a family of women who could take care of themselves, thankyouverymuch. What’s a superhero to do?
If you’re my dad, you adjust your cape and teach.
So, okay. My sister and I can replace our car batteries and take care of a garden from sowing to reaping and strip and paint rooms with ease. Both our parents raised us with the mentality of “if it needs to get done, roll up your sleeves and do it.” But there are some things we need guidance with. Like when my water heater gave up the ghost last winter. I suspected I shouldn’t pay a plumber/electrician to install a new one. But I also knew it wasn’t a one-Longo job. So I called Dad.
After some good-natured grumbling (as he gets older, he sometimes points out his cape is getting a bit tired) Dad came over with his tool chest. As he measured, eyeballing connector hoses and pipes, inspecting gaskets and screws, he patiently explained everything he was doing. “This fitting’s got a slow leak. See it there? We’ll need to pick up a new one. And an elbow joint. Just in case.” We headed off to Home Depot, where we stared at tanks while Dad enumerated the many benefits and flaws of the average warranty. (I’ll admit I hadn’t thought to look at this closely, but since this was the second water heater I’d needed in a decade, when he told me to check to see if the warranty covered high iron content in the water, I did.) Unfortunately, this Home Depot didn’t have the tank size I needed: Papa Bear and I needed to drive to Manchester, which in actuality was only, say, twenty-five miles from where we were, but to hear the way Dad was talking, might as well have been halfway across the country. (“We have to go on the highway? There goes the afternoon!”) We made it just fine, found the right tank, and headed home.
As mentioned, this was not the first water tank I’ve had to replace, so when we got back to my basement, Dad realized I’d already heard and mastered some of these lessons (soldering, for instance, has become old hat). He looked a little ... sad. Like maybe there was nothing left to teach.
I hated seeing him so blue. After all, this was the man who’d carefully explained the difference between artificially inseminating a cow versus a sow, in case his daughters ever found themselves in a situation where this information might mean the difference between life and death. (No, I can’t imagine what that situation would be, but it was an interesting lecture just the same.) Here he was, probably wondering if his work molding us into self-sufficient adults might be done. If it was time to retire the cape.
I couldn’t let that happen. I tried to think of something Dad had yet to impart knowledge on. Financial investing? No, he’d covered that pretty thoroughly. How to skin a deer? Check. How to properly sharpen a scythe? We’d gone over that last summer.
But there was one topic—one thing his daughters have never grasped his views on, though he’s espoused on it time and time again over the years. One lone subject in which my father has continued to be unsuccessful in showing his kids why he’s right, and we’re wrong.
He looked so sad, sitting there, pipe wrench in hand, blinking at the (slightly messy, but still sufficient) soldering job I’d just finished. I had to take one for the team. I heaved a sigh and straightened my shoulders.
“So, how about that election?” I asked.
Dad’s whole face brightened. His cheeks flushed as he began to wax poetic on why, for the sake of all things reasonable, Republican politics just made more sense. I sat, gritting my teeth into a smile. The reds and blues of his superhero outfit seemed to shine with renewed purpose as he explained trickle-down economics. His cape waved in a nonexistent breeze as he detailed how the Affordable Care Act was failing. Tears glistened in his eyes as he debated the existence of global warming.
I had tears in my eyes, too (for very different reasons). My inner Wonder Woman was railing to bring up pictures of drowning polar bears and shrinking ice caps on my phone. But this was my dad. He’d spent all day driving across two towns to help me find a dependable water heater with a decent warranty. He wasn’t going to let his daughter go without hot water, no matter how much of a pain it was to unhook and roll out the old heater. He loves me, Republican or no.
And I love him, too. Republican or no. I settled in for a lecture on how school vouchers reflect all that is right with free market economics, deciding now was not the time to remind him both his wife and his eldest daughter were public school teachers. He was happy. That was all that mattered.
Happy Father’s Day, Dad!
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