Today Is My Father's Birthday

     It's hard to believe it has been eighteen years since my father died, shortly before his 99th birthday. He is still very much present with me. To honor him today, I post the following poem.

Dear Dad,

Thanks for telling me I was perspicacious and impudent

when I was three years old

and for the butel-rotten-lotten-gitter-wetter-cotter story.

I have loved language ever since.

Thanks for bouncing me on your knee

with the irresistible rhythms of "McGinty"

and reciting again and again "The Raven" and "The Cremation of Sam McGee."

Memorizing poetry is my favorite hobby today.

Thanks for reaching for the encyclopedia

at any hint of a question.

Would I have decided to get a Ph.D.in my sixties

if you hadn't shown me a curiosity for learning?

Thanks for explaining chameleons and terrapins

and that bees don't sting when they're swarming

and snakes won't hurt me if I don't hurt them.

Nature has become my habitat.

Thanks for all the adventures: camping in the Appalachian woods

Canoeing in the Okefenokee swamp

Car-camping from Georgia to Alaska with the whole family.

My life, too, has been rife with adventure.

Thanks for family council and discussing all those traits—

generosity, respect, loyalty, cheerfulness—

that made us think about how we behave.

Those words are still the foundation of my actions.

Thanks for the example of respect and tolerance:

Hiring a black man to work in your lab.

Saying about your children: you'd rather have a happy moron than an unhappy genius.

It's the basis of the way I treat people today.

Thanks for the example of good health and aerobic exercise:

running five miles every morning before breakfast

even into your nineties.

May I do as well at that age.

And thanks always for the humor.

The list is long, Dad, of gratitude.

Maybe you gave me these things through your genes

but I prefer to think you gave them through your teaching

because then I can thank you for consciously

doing for me what you did.