There are many things I am proud to say I have in common with my dad. We both relished the way a baseball feels in the palm of your hand. Two fingers stretched across the red stitching, the windup, the release, the whizz of a fastball, the popping sound it makes when leather hits leather. We both have a bit of red, and we both have less of it now. I wear mine on the top of my head. Dad wore his as whiskers to his beard. We both loved sitting down to noodle at the piano at the end of the day. Simon and Garfunkel, Showtunes, Disney ballads. If Dad hit a wrong note, he could cover it up with his singing, which was always right on key. I, on the other hand, must suffer the sound of my bad notes.
But an understanding of and proficiency with numbers, I do not have. Every year when it came time to do my taxes, I called Dad to check my work. One year he said, “Why don’t you use TurboTax?” The next year I called him again. “I thought you were going to use TurboTax.” To which I said, “I did.”
Anyway, keep in mind that Dad is not here to check my work as I now proceed to do the numbers.
20. That’s how old my dad was when I was born. Not even a whole year yet past being a teenager.
50. That’s the amount of dollars I’m guessing he was worth at the time. My mom told me once that the reason they decided to have me when they were still so young and penniless was because they wanted Jonathan to have someone to grow up with. A playmate, a brother, a sidekick. It was Dad, though, who told me they had me because they liked having Jonathan so much and simply wanted another.
2. That’s the number of miles my dad moved between houses in his lifetime. Well, that’s not entirely true. From Fort Dix, New Jersey to Schaumburg, Illinois it’s 822 miles. From Schaumburg, Illinois to Mansfield, Massachusetts it’s 1,000 miles. But all that happened before my dad was even 8. 10 years later, when Dad was 18 and he moved from 497 Williams Street to 100 Gilbert Street, he moved his bed 1 mile. When, at 30 years old my parents built us a home at 386 Gilbert Street, that distance was also just 1 mile. Are you checking my work? 1 mile plus 1 mile equals 2 miles. My point is this: growing up in a big family alongside 5 brothers and sisters, Dad never got to travel much farther than to the baseball fields in town on his bike. That he and Mom were able to take Jonathan and I to Prince Edward Island, Sedona, Glacier Park, Hawaii, and Swanzey Campgroud (just to name a few of Dad’s favorites), and then later to travel all over Europe with Mom, is something Dad never took for granted. But most of all, he never took living close to family for granted. His favorite distances to travel were any that led him back home to his people, and especially to Sharon, Attleboro, and anywhere he could hear someone call him Papa.
7. That’s the number of runs his little league team, The Giants, scored against the Dodgers on May 22, 1972. Dad pitched a no hitter that day, striking out every batter in the game but one, who on the last pitch of the game from Dad hit a pop-fly that got caught by—you guessed it—the pitcher. Dad kept the game ball from that day, along with 5 or 6 other balls from his years playing little league. I found them in a box down in the basement last week. On each one he wrote an epitaph to whatever poor opponent he took down that day.
80. That’s how fast Dad’s fastball felt coming at my head when he was still only 29 and I was 9. He wanted to show me that the harder you throw the baseball the more accurate you will be. I thought he was going to give me the ball and say, now throw it as hard as you can. Instead, he told me to sit down on second base. Not around second base, but on second base. I crouched down. “No, sit on your butt.” I did. Did you know that when you’re on your butt, you can’t get out of the way of flying objects very quickly? Dad stood on home plate and hummed the ball at my head. I’d like to tell you that’s the day I learned to throw a baseball hard, but it’s not. It was the day Dad helped me to see I could do hard things. It was also the day I realized that even if I wasn’t as good a ballplayer as some of the other boys, my dad could show up their dads any day.
39. That’s how old Dad was when he got his first big break in banking. Having worked 21 years already as a teller, branch manager, and treasurer, with nothing but a high school diploma under his belt, he got to the top rung as president. Mind you, Dad never put it that way, because Dad never really talked about it. If you asked him what he did for a living, he’d say he was married to Martha, was a dad, a Papa, and loved to mow the lawn. If you pressed him on what he did for a career, he’d tell you plainly, I’m in banking. But if you really pressed him, he’d tell you he was a bank president. For being a bit temperamental in his younger years, Dad turned out to be very patient and steadfast. I loved telling people this about him, about how hard he worked to become a president. Still, if you asked him, he’d tell you he didn’t always do everything right. He was honest to admit that, like all of us, he could have done better by people at times, and that he reached the top rung only because others turned around and, with grace and kindness, pulled him up. Which is something we all should do every day for one another.
31. That’s the number of days since Dad last did what may have been one of his favorite things to do in life: pick up the check at a restaurant. For whatever Dad didn’t ask for in this world, calling up his two sons to ask us if we’d pick him up to go out for coffee or dinner in his last days was never a problem for him. A few weeks ago, he said he wanted to go to Fresh Catch. Walking had become a bear for him at that point, and he also didn’t seem to have much of an appetite, but he hobbled his way in and to a table where he feasted on sushi and oysters. We made him promise he wouldn’t throw up on mom in the middle of the night. When it came time to pay the bill, he pulled out the only thing he had in his pocket, his debit card. “I thought you didn’t have that,” I said. Mom had discovered a fraudulent charge on her card a few days earlier and had been using Dad’s ever since, giving us, we thought, the perfect excuse to pick up the check for once. “I made sure to get it from Mom before we left the house,” he told us. Of course he did. That was Dad. He knew that good food makes for a good table makes for good friends, but first we must be generous.
And finally, but certainly not least, 65. That’s the number of years Dad grew to be upon this earth. In our grief and longing, I have heard some call it a small number, a too small number. But when I think of life and love—what one makes of it and what remains of it—I can only think to call it what I believe Dad would have called it, and would call it even now: a good, complete number.
Rest easy, Dad. You pitched a pretty perfect game.
PleaseGrace 