Musings

Today my dear father turns 85 years of age. Yesterday we all went down to the Vergennes Memorial Day Parade, the biggest in the state, held in the smallest city in the USA. He, as always, was in charge of the sound system for the reviewing stand, got there early and set it up, we tested it, he found a place for his lawn chair in the shade of his van. The parade tootled by, wonderful, full of remembrances and bicycles and candy thrown to screaming packs of children, my own son included, delighted to find an oddly reversed version of Halloween in May. You sit there and people ride by and throw candy at you. Not bad. At one point, a small, modest float cruised by, pulled by a little tractor, with a sign that said “World War II Veterans.” It was populated with 2 rows of folding chairs, occupied by 10 or 12 old WWII vets, a woman among them. When they saw my dad in the shade of the truck, they all waved and made “Hop on!” motions to him, but he stayed in the shade, waved to them, and remained humble as ever. My dad saw much action in WWII. My son and I have begun to interview and record his memories of it, what he will tell, anyway. Like many vets, as I hear, there are some things he won’t recount.

So today he turns 85, as my mom struggles to heal from a rough year and he makes house for himself nowadays. The past year has brought us all closer together. We see each other a lot more, we care for each more tenderly, and we adjust to huge changes in how things have always been. 

If you can, lift a glass today in tribute to this fine human being, my dad, the kindest old Irishman this side of the sea, the stubbornest, too, the man whom I, as a little child, was convinced knew everything in the universe.