A Trophy Dad

This morning I noticed a wastebasket in the hallway outside my office.  In it were six or seven trophies my dad had won at lawn bowling tournaments.

By now all of my dad’s “stuff” has been sold, given away, or discarded, with the exception of several pieces of art that are in storage and eight boxes resting in a small space outside my office door.  A few weeks ago I asked a friend to sort out the contents of those boxes, and I’m guessing she decided to trash Dad’s trophies.

I immediately rescued them.

My dad died almost 18 months ago at the age of 104.  One cord that still connects me to him are my memories.  Just yesterday I shared with one of my sons a story about going deep sea fishing with Dad when I was fourteen and both of us caught our legal limit of albacore.

“I’m never going deep sea fishing again,” he said as we loaded our “haul” (20 albacore in burlap sacks) into the trunk of his car.

“Why not, dad?”

“Alan, it could never be better than today.”

True to his word, he never went deep sea fishing again.

Dad played racquetball until he was eighty, the same age that I am now.

“Too many gashes on my head,” he said when he quit.

A few years later he took up lawn bowling.  I remember that he and the two other members of his team once played a match in which they earned a perfect score, which is even more exceptional than a perfect 300 in regular bowling.  It was so unusual that the feat was reported in the local newspaper.

Another cord that still connects me to my dad are his possessions.  His wallet rests in my desk drawer at home.  Copies of the two books he wrote are displayed on a shelf in my dining room.  And his trophies . . . I will not let them go.  Maybe I’ll give them to his grandchildren at some point, but for now I want to keep them.

I have no idea about the names, let alone the lives, of my great grandparents, and I do not expect that my own great grandchildren will remember much about me.  But even though I may be loyal to a fault, I have become more attached to my memory of Dad, and to a few of his possessions, as the fact of his actual presence in my life is attenuated by time.

In the words of Frank Sinatra, thanks for the memory.

You are a Trophy Dad.

Love,

Alan