I want to hug my dad today.
I want to wrap my arms around him to tell him one more time
how much I love him, treasure him, adore him.
I want him to know what he always knew, that I love him
through and through.
As far as dads go, he hit and missed the mark, as all dads
do, no matter what the Hallmark cards say. He knew how to be a father, learning the practical aspects
from his own dad, a North Dakota farmer and banker.
He always had his priorities straight. He put the roof over
our heads, and we never.ever.worried.about.shelter.
He put food in our bellies. And the scales today tell me what I have always known…something
I have never known…lack.
He put my mother first and cherished her. I never heard my father yell, scream,
throw things, insist upon his way.
He was always willing to give up what he might have wanted very badly. He had a knowing about him—something about
being willing to lay down your life for your brothers as a soldier made you
willing to lay down your will for your family. There was no guile in my father.
I wish I could remember sitting next to him in church; I wish I had memories of him reading
his Bible. But his faith was
internal, and he kept it there.
Oh, Dad, I would tell him today, don’t you know how much Jesus loved
you? When asked, he would always
say, “God doesn’t owe me anything.”
I always wanted to tell him that was precisely the point. But he knew…he knew. The reassurance was my need, not his.
I have my father’s transistor radio. It still works. When he was stationed
in VietNam, he kept it in his pocket, and it connected him to us through the
armed forces radio station. He
knew what was happening in our world when we knew so very little about what was
happening in his. I’m so grateful
he was protected from harm, though he brought home scars from battle that he
would never divulge.
I have my father’s first picture book. Inside the front cover, scrawled in his
earliest penmanship, is his name, Lauren. I run my fingers over that crayon stain, wishing, wishing,
that I could hold the little boy he was.
I can picture that boy sitting next to his mother, Julia, showing her
the lamb, the cow, the duck. He
was a farmer’s boy—he could have looked out the window to see the same things.
I have my father’s autograph book. His big brother, Al, whose life journey took him to combat
with Merrill’s Marauders and down the deadly trail to Bataan, wrote this to my
dad in 1940: “ Dear Lauren, I will always remember you as my fattest little
brother…the guy who was always in the way when we were playing games because
you were too fat to keep up. Your
biggest brother, Al. “ I have a
huge smile as I write this—picturing the big humor and big smile of my dad as
he probably took Al to the floor in a headlock.
From his brother Pete came these words just three months
after Al’s: “Dear Lauren, Christmas
comes but once a year, but a chance to write in your autobiography comes but
once in a lifetime so I’ll sign my name, Mr. Marvin Overby, better known as
Pete.” Pete didn’t sign my father’s
book again, succumbing to a brain tumor when he was still but a young man.
In August of 1941, his brother George wrote: “Dearest Brother, well boy, we better
get this cake down and nectar too and go to bed. We got the work to do and we’re just the guys to do it. And
if any guys want to make anything of it, well let them do it. We’re too tired. Your brother pal, George.” George sat beside my mother when
we laid my father to rest at Arlington National Cemetery in 2004.
On April 8, 1941, my father’s mother wrote: “Dearest son
Lauren, There is another album, filled with leaves of spotless white, where no
name is ever tarnished, but forever pure and bright. In the book of life-God’s album-may your name be penned with
care, and may all who have written here write their names forever there. Lovingly, Mother”
Happy Father’s Day, dad.
I miss you. Every.single.day.
