Well, Dad, it’s Father’s Day again, and the retailers of America have some gifts in mind for you. Williams Sonoma thinks you might be in the market for monogrammed barbecue tools. Sharper Image is urging me to give you a heated shaving-cream dispenser. And according to the online Brooks Brothers Father’s Day shop, “Perfecting a tie knot is a lifelong endeavor.” Which I think means I should buy you more ties.
I can’t help but feel that these items are meant for some generic father who comes home and pats his children on the head before retreating to drink sherry in his study. That just isn’t you.
We have always been alike. Your hippie days matched by my Manic Panic phase, your underlined collected Yeats further marked up with my notes. You taught me to love all the great things in life: the British Invasion, Rodgers and Hammerstein, cold pizza, Edna O’Brien. From you I have stolen countless CDs and books and thick woolen socks. Not to mention the years of your life spent driving me around.
With varying degrees of success, I’ve tried to give you Father’s Day gifts that speak to our connection, not some World’s Best Dad cliche. Let’s review the highlights.
1989
Coupon book with offer of one free* trip to Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House
*Not including price of admission or gas. (In my defense, I was eight.)
The first stories I heard came from you. In the books you read to me again and again, in the voices you gave to each of my stuffed animals. I started writing because of your stories.
You took me to Concord, to see where the real authors lived. You told me to write whatever I wanted, not to censor myself, not to worry who I might offend. I could never give my child that sort of permission. When my first novel was published and a reporter asked you for the titles of my favorite childhood books, you said Anne of Green Gables and Little Women, though later you told me, “The true answer is The Baby-sitters Club, but that reporter doesn’t need to know everything.”
1995
Reservoir Dogs poster
The spring of my freshman year, a miracle of Ringwaldian proportions occurred when a very cute junior asked me out. A few dates later, he came over to watch Reservoir Dogs. His choice. I might have gone with Four Weddings and a Funeral, but no matter. The popcorn was popped, my outfit carefully selected, you and Mom warned to stay upstairs under pain of death. My date and I sat side-by-side on the couch in the den, our thighs gently touching, when you strolled in and said, quite convincingly, “What are you guys watching? Whoa. Reservoir Dogs? This is my favorite movie of all time.” You dropped to the couch, nearly falling onto our laps, so that we were forced to scoot apart. Afterward, still stunned from the awkwardness of it all, I asked if you really liked the film. You replied, “God, no.”
1996
Neil Young concert tickets (the cheap seats)
On frigid Massachusetts mornings, you’d go out and warm up the car while I flat-ironed my hair for school. You drove me most days. One Monday you engaged me in a conversation about The Grapes of Wrath. You had decided to read along with my English class syllabus, since—despite the fact that you loved books—when you were a student, you never did the required reading. Like you, I rarely completed my literature assignments, but not because I was out partying. I skipped reading, most of the time, to read. Sylvia Plath and Ellen Gilchrist and Jeanette Winterson instead of Updike and Fitzgerald and Tolstoy. So when you asked what I made of the eviction of the tenant farmers in Chapter 5, I replied, “Sad.” You probed a bit further, with an invented plot twist, “Did you see that move to a vegetarian commune coming?” I shook my head earnestly. “I really didn’t.” You just nodded at me. “Read the book.”
Despite your excellent taste in music, you were never a snob about mine. Back when you were driving me to elementary school, you sang along with Paula Abdul and the New Kids on the Block Christmas album, all year round. In eighth grade, I discovered the wonders of Nirvana, Pearl Jam. Bands you had already discovered, though you were too polite to point that out and ruin them for me. You took my friends and me to every concert before we were old enough to go on our own. At Green Day and the Foo Fighters, you stood in back in a suit. Not trying to be the cool dad, the ‘I’m Not a Dad’ Dad, just knowing how important our music was to us.
At fifteen, I could finally afford to take you to a concert. I knew you loved Neil Young. I’d love to say I did too, but we both know I had an ulterior motive. I wanted to go because his opening act was Jewel. The night of the show, walking around beneath the stars, I realized something shocking: You’re cool. Much cooler than me. Still sorting this one out.
1992
Beatles puzzle and mug
1994
Unauthorized Beatles Biography
2000
The Beatles 1 album and Paul McCartney Yellow Submarine figurine
2004
The Beatles The Capitol Albums, Vol. 1
2006
The Beatles The Capitol Albums, Vol. 2
About the Beatles. Perhaps I went a bit overboard. But you loved them so much and instilled that love in me. We were unabashed in our love, as if we were the only ones to feel it, as if loving the Beatles wasn’t a bit like loving puppies or vacation.
When I was living in London at nineteen, a friend and I were at her parents’ house on Christmas Eve, planning our future weddings. Her father came into the room and she asked him what song he thought they’d dance to when she got married. He laughed at us, said Maybe you should find a groom first. Fair point. The next time I saw you, I asked the same question. There was no pause before you said “In My Life.” Last June, on my wedding day, that was the song.
2007
Jersey Boys tickets
You deserved a good gift that year. And since Frankie Valli himself played your prom, I thought those tickets were just the thing. By then, we’d been living apart for eight years. At some point, I grew accustomed to the sad sight of you driving away—starting with summer camp, then the day you dropped me at college, and then my first God-awful New York apartment, which was not actually in New York, but in Weehawken. (Let us never speak of that dark time.) I don’t think I ever considered you looking back in the rearview mirror until you mentioned it recently.
I’d had a terrible breakup and lived alone for the first time. I came home late one night to find a dead mouse on the kitchen floor. I couldn’t call my ex to come deal with it, much as I wanted to. So I called you and demanded that you stay on the line. Phone pressed to my ear, I put on a pair of sunglasses and wrapped my hand in ten garbage bags. I picked up the mouse, cringing, and ran the four flights downstairs to throw it in the trash. “I did it!” I cried, triumphant. “And I didn’t need help from any man.”
“Besides me,” you reminded. I’d forgotten you were there.
J. Courtney Sullivan is the author of the novels Commencement, Maine, and The Engagements.
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