Dad Season in anticlimatic

mom and dad, 1970s

Someone happened to give me a photo they had of my dad and me, in passing once on a job site I think, and I’ve kept it clipped to the visor of my truck ever since. It’s a photo of me, a baby, sitting in the seat of a giant orange Kubota tractor with large wheel wells framing the seat. I am looking not too sure of anything, and also off to the bottom right. My dad has his back to the camera, with one big muscled arm extending horizontally across the frame to the wheel well, casual but at-the-ready in case I decided to throw myself out of the seat. His body is facing me, but his head is turned back, towards the camera. He’s wearing aviator sunglasses, a dark tank top, hairline somewhat receding into a widows peak, and an odd little smile on his face. You can see the wind in his hair and the bleached yellow grass running down the hill in the background. It’s a lot of how I remember my dad- on breezy autumn days, just he and I, hanging around heavy equipment in the great outdoors.

He was a “bad boy” according to my uncle, my mother’s brother. Never went to church. Liked to drink and party. Didn’t care for following rules for the sake of it. He was never a “bad boy” to us, though. The idea didn’t even cross my mind (while making perfect sense) until after he was gone. To us he was just your average low level super hero dad, capable of knowing what to do in any situation, clever, industrious, money-machine. He was obsessed with milking old people of wisdom, and it was often all he would talk about. He was just so…steady. The world was a safe place to be with him in it. He never hit any of us, not once- at worst, he grabbed my arm once when I had really fucked up, but he just held it for a second and let it go. I could feel him containing himself. Lots of redirected energy. I learned later that his own dad, my grandpa, beat on him a lot- and his response was to never want to do anything like that to anyone else. He might have been “bad,” and tough, but my dad was horribly and uncontrollably empathetic.

It’s still so weird having him gone. He was such a fascinating main character in the story of my life. You ever read a book that prematurely kills off the only character you were really into? Ever have a hard time reading it after that? Things feel that way this time of year. Deer Season is coming up, and that’s usually when the grief peaks. With that cherished memory of my dad and my uncle and myself and my brother laughing around a pot of chili, bubbling on a wood stove while football played on a tiny square TV in the corner, out in the starlit forests of Wilderness State Park at their grandparents old farm and homestead.