Sunday, June 19, 2005

Dapper Dan on Daddy Day

Father’s Day: what an interesting time of year.  We’re verging on the solstice; mornings come early and night comes late; the air is full of warmth and potential and even though I’m working harder than ever, I’m enjoying it too.  Coincidentally, my mom just sent me a small cache of photos that her brother had acquired from their parents - photos of myself in exceptional sartorial splendor with some exceptional friends (coincidences to be explained below).  Here, let’s take a peek at a few:

This is me in late 1969, I suppose, ready to hit the house of worship for channukah services.  The silver menorah behind me is german, from the 19th century, and though I can’t say we were “friends,” it was and remains one of my favorite things in the world.  The same goes for the globe behind me, which features Pangea and Swaziland but was lots of fun to spin into a blur.  The nehru jacket, on the other hand, was not so much a big favorite of mine at the time, but in retrospect I sort of carried it off.  I guess I was a pretty hip little kid.  Sometimes.

Sometimes I was less hip.  Here I am with two dear friends - one who needs no introduction, and Mr. Harry Kim.  Harry was, effectively, “adopted” by my maternal grandparents after uncle Dick met him, curiously enough, in Korea, during a military assignment there.  Harry wanted to move to the states and become an engineer, and my grandfather helped that happen and set him up in a good job in our ancestral hometown of Lima, Ohio; Harry stayed there his whole career, eventually retiring as plant manager of a huge oil refinery.  He has been and remains a close friend to the family for fifty years, and was a devoted support to my grandparents till they both passed.  Harry and his family are our family.  On a different note, I do not recall owning this striped jumper-stetson ensemble, but I will take this photo as a caution never to wear anything like it again.  Oh, the humanity.

Finally, this is a photo of my dear dad and me working the n-gauge model train he built for me in the garage.  This was a damn fine train set, eventually running past three stations with several switches and sidings.  It must have been pretty new at this time because all we seem to have had set up was the primary figure-8 track, and our polka-dot trainsmen’s hats seem brand spanking new.  I had a great time with that train, and it was really good “dad time,” too.  So thanks, mom, for sending these photos along, and thanks, dad, for putting in the time and making my childhood so delightful (despite anything to the contrary I might have said at the time), and for being there for me and my family from then till now with steadfast love and heartfelt committment.

These sentiments of paternal appreciation are foremost in my mind this season because this is the first Father’s Day on which I consider myself an honoree - though still by a bit of a remove: we are waiting to travel to Korea to take our new son home.  Kelly and I have been working for some time on adopting a baby and we got word a few weeks ago that we’ve been approved and that our son has been assigned to us.  He’s three months old and doing very well with a foster family outside of Seoul; we should be able to go get him sometime around October.  Our lives now are a rondelay of preparation and anticipation as we read and watch and imagine how we’ll handle the coming new world we will inhabit as a family.  This is, for me, a father’s day to remember - looking back at good fatherly memories, and looking forward to making some new ones of my own.  Wish us luck.  This time next year I’ll be needing a lot of it.