I first want to wish all of you who are Fathers a happy Fathers Day !!!
Second I want to relay a story of my early Fathers day gift .
I got this very unexpected gift back on May 23 , 2009 . I am the Quality Manager at a intermodal ramp repair facility , I’ve been a Car Knocker for many years but I have moved into Management so I don’t get to work on the cars anymore . My oldest Daughter is a Carman Apprentice here at the ramp , she has worked here for almost a year , but in this time I have yet be able to work with my daughter and it is something I have wanted to do , but there is always something taking me away for other projects .
On this particular Saturday I was on call and I got a call to come out to the yard to help get things organized as there were 3 trains all coming in with in a few minutes of each other and 4 people called off this Saturday . My oldest was with me at the House when I got the call , so since it was her day off I talked her in to going in with me . Once we got there and I put together a game plan I told my daughter to suite up “we” going to work !
We grabbed a truck and tools and some car repair bills and started making repairs together . 2 great things happened I got to work with my daughter and I got to actually fix some train cars for a change .What a treat is was to watch my daughter work , here is a young normal girl cutting with a torch , prying back brake beams and changing parts on a car , just like I have done , she was very good and professional and took great pride in her work . While I would love to say she will always be a Car knocker like dad I know she won’t , but for now she is doing what she used to tell me she would do when she was little " Daddy I want to be just like you !" I felt proud because for this one moment she is just like me . What a treat !!!
Thanks for the sentiments to all…this is an interesting Fathers Day for me personally…it is the 27th Fathers Day for me personally being a father…it is the fourth Fathers Day since my own Dad passed away and this weekend I moved my Mother into an assisted living facility in Myrtle Beach so I am now sitting at the Myrtle Beach airport waiting on a flight back to Chicago so I can spend the rest of Fathers Day with my son and wife at home (son is picking me up at O’Hare in a while). Happy Fathers Day to my Dad and to all Dads out there wherever you are.
I just got off the phone with my younger daughter, who called from California to wish me a happy Father’s Day.
I’m proud of both of my girls–the one who gave up a good job teaching middle-school special ed to raise three precocious kids of her own, and the one who’s now pursuing a doctorate in musicology.
It was the younger daughter who gave me perhaps my best experience of fatherhood, at a surprisingly late age. Her college orchestra had a performance in the extreme south of Chicagoland (Governor’s State), and I was the lucky one who got to go attend and bring her home to her apartment (with her then-fiance, now husband). Their concert consisted of one large work: Mahler 6, probably the most emotional symphony of a composer who was almost pure emotion. Since she was the principal violist and near the front of the stage, I could see the tears on her cheeks as they played the third and fourth movements of this gigantic work. I, who know the piece well enough to anticipate what’s coming, was also in tears.
Words wouldn’t do much for our feelings as we left the university. But a routine drive home just didn’t seem right, either. So I decided we’d go home via a route that wasn’t familiar to her, but might treat me to a few trains (which she wouldn’t mind, either). So I asked her, “Are you up for an adventure?” And this young lady, who had already given one of the most draining (for both of us) adventures of our lives that evening, gave the perfect answer:
“Always!”
Knowing that she had a fiance waiting for her (and I had a spouse at home, too), but was willing to take the time for a trip like this, I realized that right then was going to be one of the best moments of my life. It still is. I don’t think we saw any trains, either.
So to all of you fathers (and at least one young father-to-be) out there, I hope you’ve had an enjoyable day, and that the enjoyment isn’t over yet!