a man of substance,
eschewing symbology,
shows love quietly.

On Father’s Day I wanted to creep back into the habit of expressing something relevant about my father.

It’s funny how most of what I admire about my father revolves around the concept of quiet expressions of love through action. Maybe it fascinates me because it goes against the grain of what I tend to do when I write. No matter what words I can manage, they will pale against the profound eloquence of those simple, often selfless actions that have been the hallmark of my father’s life as I’ve observed it.

So before I muddy it up with any more flailing attempts at eloquence, I just want to say thanks to my father, and wish all the other dads out there a great Father’s Day.

Agnes Lucia,
7 pounds, 15 ounces,
born this past wednesday.

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dad turns 70,
reveling in a lifetime
and its memories.

it would have taken
so much less effort to be
“dad” in name only.

Tags: fathers day, appreciation

As I sneak my Father’s Day post just under the wire this year…

The following is from a Father’s Day meditation I posted two years ago:

My father’s not a loud man, not one to boast, even when he’s right and everyone else is pretty much wrong. In my youth I mistook his humility for weakness, but now I realize that the measured approach he took with life’s little twists and turns is what helped him not turn and run when times were tough. He taught me, among other things, that love requires humility (sometimes even humiliation) and that strength is more often demonstrated through patience than through brute force.

He has always been on the quieter side of things, revealing a sense of manhood that can’t be mimicked with the chest-beating machismo so often mistaken for manliness. Physically, he’s always been a strong man, but his intellectual depth and perspective are what have impressed me most as I’ve grown older, and some might even say, wiser.

Or in the words of Robert Hayden: (more…)

Tags: father’s day, Robert Hayden poetry, Those Winter Sundays