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closeGuest column: A tribute to good dads
Joan Cronk / guest columnist
I still think of my son as a little guy with his head resting on my shoulder, or the first day of kindergarten when he held my hand tightly as we walked into Milton grade school. He is a dad now and nearly 40 years old.
Four years ago he and his wife had a second child, and as we were all still oohing and ahhing over the new baby, the doctor steered my son into a room where he sat on a little stool and listened to the words that would shape his life. He was the first of us to hear that his second child had been born with Down syndrome. I wish I had been there to hold his hand. Now they have three children and when Jeff talks about our little guy with DS he says, “I’m just so lucky to have him as my son.”
My son-in-law is a busy ER doc and makes time on his days off to play Star Wars with his son or have a tea party with his little girl. He is an amazing father, a very smart man and a great son-in-law.
My dad was a man before his time. Born in 1917, he was a nurturing and loving father. He was also very funny.
When I was a teenager I took up knitting and whipped up a pair of argyle socks for him, lickety split. They weren’t all that good as it was my first big project, but he wore them with pride. Soon the socks began to droop, and I suggested he toss them out. “Oh never. These socks are fine and dandy,” he said, and as he walked away from me, I noticed the left sock had slipped below his anklebone.
On an old NYPD Blue episode one of the cops, Sipowitz, was shaving with his young son, the kid with a plastic razor. He asked his dad when he would be able to use a REAL razor and ol’ Sip said when he got a lot older. When the doorbell rang and Sipowitz left the bathroom, he set his razor on the ledge above the door opening. Right away, I knew the kind of a dad he was — cautious, careful. They didn’t have to tell the audience, “Sip was a good dad.” We just knew it.
Years ago the neighborhood kids came home from an outing and proudly presented their dad with something they had purchased for him at a souvenir shop. I was outside weeding my garden and stopped long enough to see their dad take a long pull on his beer, lean against his car and say, “What did you waste your money on that for anyway?” Right then and there I had a pretty good hunch about the kind of a dad he was, too.