Meredith Mansfield, Author

Well, I blogged about Mom on Mother’s Day. I suppose I should give Dad equal time. It’s not that I don’t want to. In some way, Dad is a harder topic for me because, well, he’s not here anymore. Dad died in 1999.

This is a photo of Dad long before I knew him. (I came along late and by surprise.) He was in the Air Force, only back then, it was still called the Army Air Corps. He was a B-17 pilot. Dad never talked much about that. He’d talk about life on the base and about his crew. He’d talk about some of the missions they flew after the war–dropping supplies into Holland, for example. But he never talked much about the actual war. I guess he had that in common with a lot of World War II vets.

This photo is actually probably older. Mom and Dad probably right around the time of their marriage in. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was taken in Tulsa, where they were married. It’s no place I recognize around here. Of course, many things have changed in the intervening years.

A lot of the photos of Dad are framed and hanging in the hallway. Without going through a major redecoration, about the only other photo I have handy is from their fiftieth wedding anniversary. That’s me in green. Not a current photo; remember, Dad died in 1999.

Dad was one of the most patient people I’ve ever met. Not, unfortunately, a virtue I inherited. He could also drive me right up a wall with it. Once I could drive, I never went shopping with Dad again. Totally different philosophies of shopping. He had to go everywhere first and then go back and buy what he’d seen at the first or second place he went to. I’m a much more directed shopper.

He was not the person you necessarily wanted to turn to for help with homework, either, being a strong proponent of the Socratic method. He always thought if you figured it out for yourself, it’d stick better. He might have been right, but that didn’t make it any less frustrating. And yet, some of those times are the ones I think of most fondly, now.

There never seemed to be anything he couldn’t do, though. He did most of the work around this house. In his day, we rarely needed to call anyone to fix anything. If something broke, I always took it to Dad.

Of course, Dad’s catch phrase was “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right.” And could I tell some stories about things “done right” that were very hard to change, later. When, years later, I had the kitchen window replaced, the men who came out to remove the old jalousie window and put in a new garden window had to resort the their sawzall to get the old one out. Three inch nails every six inches. That was my dad.

I learned a lot from him. Somedays, I wish he’d felt it more important to teach me some of the things he knew about maintaining this old house. That’d come in handy now. But Dad was from a different generation and didn’t think I needed to know how to snake a drain. Wrong!

Miss you, Dad.