My Dad and I bickered over everything. The price of gas, which way to drive somewhere, the best way to cook something, clean something and big important things too. Politics, abortion, racism, women’s rights, religion. We spent a full two weeks arguing over where you go when you die. He said “in the hole” and I disagreed.
He was a contrarian. Whatever opinion he had today, he might argue as heartily two days later for the OTHER SIDE. His education was limited, his intelligence was vast. He consumed knowledge (read two newspapers every day from front to back) like it was wine, which he consumed an awful lot of too. He protected the underdog, animals, little kids and old people. Not in a nice fatherly way, but in a way that empowered people to try to do better themselves.
He was difficult but open minded. You could change his mind if you had the strength and will to prove him wrong. And I did. It was exhausting but it also prepared me for the challenges in life that I never expected. You didn’t tangle with Danny DeLuca if you were weak. I grew strong and capable through our constant battles.
Even as a really old man, when he lived with me, something I pronounced sometime earlier in life “would only happen if I was half dead”, he kept up the constant activity. Physical activity-working in the garden, doing carpentry jobs, shopping and cooking. He was a constant whirl of physical and mental activity. He ended every day asking what “progress” we had made. So, we sat around the dinner table talking about that and if you didn’t do anything that showed progress, you kind of felt like a loser.
He also was always hopeful that the future would be better than today. That all of this industrious effort was the road to future success. What I didn’t know about my Dad was a lot. He battled inner demons that made him constantly vigilant. He was authentic and emotional and confusing and hard to understand. He was very human and as much as he would have liked to hide that, he could not. He was too real to be fake. So, another Father’s Day, I get to consider the craziness that was my Dad and realize that we have an awful lot in common. Even the stupidity to get too much sun every time we visited Florida.
