Memories of one who is no longer around

Today is my dad's birthday.

We won't be celebrating it, because my dad passed away last March and we buried him in a lovely ceremony in Arlington National Cemetery. He lived 82 years and change, and this would have been his 83rd birthday.

I didn't see him much during the 20 years I lived on the West Coast -- home for a few Christmases, that sort of thing -- and we didn't spend as much time talking on the phone as we could have. It's funny that we almost always regret these things when it's too late to do any good, although I suppose the people who are still around benefit a little from our newly acquired resolve.

My dad was a good man, a fine man who cared more about his family than anything else. He traveled for work all through my high school years -- four times a year, three or four weeks each time -- and the thing I remember more than anything else about those trips is that every day, six postcards came in the mail.

One for my mother and one for each of the five children, just letting us know that no matter where he was, we were in his thoughts and in his heart.

It took me a long time to appreciate him. I spent too many years at war with him, a war that only I was fighting and in which I was the only casualty.

I was a gifted child, and in those days of the late '50s, parents never knew whether to push a gifted child or allow him to proceed at his own speed. My parents pushed me, and there came a point at which I started pushing back. I have no idea why, and I still have control issues that sometimes drive my lovely wife up the wall.

But it was my dad who gave me my love of family and my love of baseball, two of the most important things in my life. He was the one who taught me that you never stand so tall as when you are putting other people first.

I've been told by people, including my own kids, that I have been a great father. Most of what I know, I learned from him. I took the thing he did that worked and used them, and the things that didn't work and abandoned them.

That made it easy.

It also made it easy that my two kids were wonderful from the start. In other words, I didn't have to raise me.

All told, I think my father was a great man and I miss him a lot.

Happy birthday, dad.