The older I get
The more I can see
How much he loved my mother and me
And he did the best that he could
And I only hope when I have my own family
That everyday I see
A little more of
My father in me
-K. Urban
So for 5 weekends, my father and I woke up early, and rode our bikes to that sand pit in the back of my school We had something called, “Spring Day,” and I was entered in the long-jump. So for 5 weekends, we rode our bikes down a hill, and across a rickety bridge, along a trail, and through a great hole in the fence. And for 5 weekends leading into May 22nd, 1981, my dad stood on the edge of a giant sandpit, which seems so tiny now. He’d yell “go,” click the stopwatch I had bought him for his birthday with money he’d been filtering me for my allowance, and I’d take off towards the sandpit. When the rear tires gave out on my bike a week later, they put a giant cast on my arm, but it never slowed me down. I kept running, doing the sprints, and jumping for distance into a decades-old sand pit. And when they took that cast off, you’d swear I was flying.
See, I know why I was doing it. I wanted to win. I wanted to be the best…the fastest….the coolest, at something…at anything. That’s why I was giving up sleeping late and cartoons and Honeycombs and Cap’n Crunch - Because an 11-year-old boy simply needs to be good at something. I couldn’t put my finger on it then..hell, I was a kid. But now, I get it. an 11-year-old boy needs to have the kids in his class mob him at the finish line, as though he’s just won a gold medal for team-3rd grade. The thing is, I never figured out why my dad did it…until now. Sure, I know…a Dad simply “does,” for his kids. But this wasn’t that…this was more.
He was doing it, because he was hunting for something. Hunting for something that he and I could share…alone, and without my sister or my mother. It wasn’t homework, or mowing the lawn or watching TV together. And it was removed from anything that anyone else would ever be a part of until today. He did it because in the same way a kid needs to be good at something…a dad needs to be a hero to his son.
And I realize it now, that while love flowed from him, thick like syrup in December, and while it ran longer than the path that went down the hill, across a rickety bridge, along a trail and through a great hole in the fence…he was never my hero. Not because he didn’t attain a lofty title…but mostly…it’s because he was my “Dad!” He wasn’t just my father - he wasn’t, “Sir!.” He was “Dad!”
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