Memories of Daddy on Fathers Day in Ecuador

Around 2 or 3 this afternoon I realized that it was Father’s Day. As the two friends we were with contemplated calling their fathers, Gary and I sat quietly. Both our father’s are deceased. Gary’s dad died when he was nine years old and my father passed away a few years ago at the age of 90.

My father was gruff and grumpy, distant and often absent, both physically and emotionally. A career Navy man, his speech was full of phrases like, “It’s time to swab the deck,” and “Let’s get this place shipshape.” I had to make my bed covers tight enough to bounce a quarter.

Dad spent six months at a time in distant places like Okinawa or Japan before returning home for six months, a stranger I would have to become reacquainted with all over again. Even after retiring from the Navy, his solitary pursuits continued.

In high school, I remember him working away from home all week in another city, coming home around noon Saturday, having the same fried eggs and bacon for breakfast, taking a nap and then spending Saturday afternoons watching sports on TV, especially wrasslin’.

Sundays he slept late, then focused on weeding his organic vegetable garden. He loved grafting fruit trees and was proud of his dwarf Sapper cherry-plums. Late afternoon he would drive the 100 miles back to work.

While my relationship with my father may seem to indicate little room for closeness or areas of commonality, there are several things we have in common. He instilled in me very early a love for traveling, for exploring new horizons and different cultures.

The many temporary homes of my childhood were full of exotic reminders of my father’s tours of duty: carved teak chests with funny brass locks, delicate Oriental teacups, silk wall hangings, grass skirts and feathered hula gourds, giant conch shells and Japanese kimonos. One of my favorites was a red velveteen bomber jacket with a silk embroidered tiger with menacing eyes.

Although dad rarely wrote me letters, sometimes special gifts would arrive. I loved getting gelatin candies with rice paper coverings you could eat.

He liked to send me jewelry and I had a treasure-trove of bracelets and necklaces that I kept in a musical black lacquer Japanese jewelry box whose tune I can still hum. Made from tiny seashells, cultured pearls, ivory and silver, I loved to take them to school for show and tell.

This Father’s Day as I sit at my desk in Ecuador, I realize how much my father has influenced my adult life. I have him to thank for my love of the finely-wrought and the exotic and for my eclectic style of decorating.

My lifelong promptings to travel the globe at least once every six months, just like my father, have helped me develop a more open mind to human differences and a greater acceptance of other cultures. They spark a curiosity that both energizes me and propels me to dig deeper into life’s mysteries. For these gifts I am eternally grateful.

Gary and I are finishing the design of our new penthouse condo in Primavera II but already I am envisioning another dream. This one features a new adobe house in the country.

There will be an organic vegetable garden, herbs and berries, The blackberries, called mora in Ecuador, grow huge and sweet, like the ones on our farm in Louisiana where I grew up. And who knows. . . Before long I may be grafting my own exotic fruit trees. Anybody ever heard of a dwarf guayabana-banana?

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