Dear Parp,
Technically, this is my third Father’s Day.
Caleb and Braxton were born on Father’s Day in 2007, so I’m pretty sure that counts as one. Larami bought me a Swiss Army knife to celebrate the occasion. I had wanted one for a really long time, so I was stoked when I got it, but, in retrospect, it seems like a really weird way to have commemorated that juncture of my life. It was basically like, “You’re a father now, Stevie. Here’s a knife.” She’s a sweet kid. And I love her dearly. I slit my thumb shortly thereafter while I was trying to open a box of taco shells or something with it. I was not built to handle tools, I suppose.
At any rate, compared to you, I’m a Father’s Day novice. You’ve seen 28 of them, and each one of them has passed with its own varying degree of crappy gift; there was a four or five year period in the ‘90s where every internal conversation I had with myself about what to get you for Father’s Day/Christmas/Birthday ended with the same well-intended but nonetheless poorly surmised conclusion: a Dallas Cowboys hat. At eleven years old, I couldn’t see how you could possibly live aptly without 23 Dallas Cowboys hats. I’m not sure how many heads I thought you had.
Anyhow, when I got to thinking about it, I realized that, with regard to my gift selections, I, in fact, was not a retard. There were two key factors that skewed the reasoning behind why you always received the same, horrible presents:
1. I was a kid, and historically kids are terrible gift-givers. You know what I got last year from my boys for Father’s Day? A painting. They can barely feed themselves now, so you can imagine how honed their painting skills were at one year old. I heard Braxton spent a good portion of the endeavor eating paint.
2. I didn’t really know anything about you. Or, at least, I thought I didn’t.
See, when you’re a kid, you need things stated to you explicitly*. That’s just the way they work.
(*Larami will argue that I still need these cues. And with regards to that subtle, relationship-y stuff, she’s right. For the life of me, I just don’t know how anyone can know that “Yes, I want to go see Blade II with you” means “No, I do not want to go see Blade II with you, and you’re a moron for assuming I would.” Incidentally, she really, really liked the movie. So there.)
And to that point, I don’t really remember any time where you sat me down and were like, “X is my favorite thing to eat, and Y was the most important person in my life when I was growing up, and Z is how my time in the Army affected my life’s trajectory.” I mean, I assumed you thought about those things, and maybe even discussed them with mom, but since you were content to never make yourself the center of any conversation with me, Sis, or Stash, I was left to my own powers of deduction.
And from what I could gather, I knew that (a) you really, really liked the Dallas Cowboys, the Spurs, and Stevie Ray Vaughan, and (b) you really, really disliked sideburns.
It was always easier to find a store that sold hats than it was to find a store that sold stuff targeting people who did not like sideburns, thus, your unfortunate hat collection.
I realize now that that reticence to talk about yourself (a trait I did not inherit, but have learned to model in spurts) is also evident in the way that you father your children; fortunately, it’s a tactic that’s considerably more effective with larger ideological principles.
I never remember a specific moment where you said, “This is how a man behaves,” or “This is how a man treats a woman,” or “This is how a man provides for his family,” or “This is how a man acts with ethics,” but they’re all things I’ve learned from you, and I suspect that that may have been your intention.
I remember this time you and I went to a Spurs game when they played in the Hemisfair Arena. I don’t know who they were playing or if they won or not or even what month it was (I know it wasn’t April or May, because they were never in the Playoffs back then). But I remember there was a possession when the Spurs were on offense, and the ball got batted back towards the other team’s end of the floor, and one lone Spur who decided to chase after it. (I'm not sure which Spur it was exactly, but it sure as shit wasn’t Terry Cummings. Remember him? I wasn’t even a teenager but even I understood that by 1992 he was too slow to reasonably be in the NBA.)
Anyway, the ball gets batted back, one Spur takes off after it, and when he realized that he wasn’t going to catch it by running, he dove for it head first like a madman. He missed by a mile. It wasn’t even close. But the arena broke into cheers. And I asked you, rather unimpressed with what had just been transpired, “Why are they cheering? He didn’t even get it.” And you replied, “Because he tried, Steven.”
It took me fifteen or so years to figure out what you meant, but I eventually did. I try now, dad.
And remember when I first started driving and you all bought me that gawdawful blue Ford Escort and I scratched the crap out of the passenger side door against the fence when you let me pull it into the driveway? I got out of the car and was mortified. You looked soooo mad. You looked madder than when I caught the house on fire when we lived on Solar and then just went in my room and went to sleep without telling anyone.
After I scratched the car I ran inside and started crying. A couple minutes later you came in my room and were like, “Come on.” I just looked at you. I didn’t want to go back out there. I was certain you were going to beat me with the car. And you said something that has morphed in my head into, “What? You’re gonna quit every time something bad happens?”
There are a ton of those moments; something monumental that you said or did that I didn’t understand –or couldn’t understand- until I had my own son(s).
You’re a leader, Parper. You provide for your family and act with morality and walk with purpose and love your wife and children without reservation, and never once have I seen you beat on your chest or bask in your accomplishments.
Day in and day out, I know exactly what to expect from you: you’re going to get up, keep everyone alive, go to sleep, and then do it again the next day. You’re like the sun.
I know things about life (and about you), even though you didn’t say them. I know only cowards lie. I know never to steal. I know that a man must always act with decency. And I know that if he doesn’t do those things, he must be willing to account for that. But maybe more importantly, I know that these aren’t things I can simply say to my own sons.
I have to be able to drive all the way from San Antonio to Houston after I get off work because they tell me their car is broken, crawl underneath it, tap on the gas reservoir, then get out, look at them, shake my head, and say, “It’s out of gas, son,” and then never mention it again. (I was not built to drive cars either, apparently.)
Simply put: I know how to be a father.
I love you immensely for that, Parp.
Happy Father’s Day.
Love,
Steven
