Father's Day in the Gaetz Family

Don Gaetz 
06/20/05

Father's Day at our house is always a pleasant, casual, generous time.

We have a family meal, either off the backyard grill or in a restaurant my wife and children know I like. The conversation is easy and warm and often turns to how lucky we are. Two parents. Two kids. Good home. Good life.

Sure, we've bickered and fussed and a day later can't remember why. Once in a while I've laid down the law when I should have laid down and rested. There's been a hint or two of sibling rivalry between our son, Matthew, and daughter, Erin, but it's matured to good-natured nudging. I can't think of any misjudgment my wife, Vicky, has ever made except perhaps marrying beneath her. From my chair I have an unobstructed view of a family that loves each other and, what's equally important, likes each other very much.

I like to think - and my family likes me to think - that having a father in the house adds irreplaceable value. Of all God's creations, the complete family has to be his most artful and balanced.

My father died when I was sixteen. I was then and still am deeply attached to him. In my eyes he was a giant of moral and physical courage. He knew everything and could do anything. When he rose to speak his community listened but he was just as willing to stand alone. In fact, he stood only 5'7" and was, by objective standards, a person of modest accomplishments and ordinary imperfections.

I could tell a hundred stories of his skill with a horse (he once won every event at the state championship horseshow and rodeo) or a gun (I saw him drop three blue-winged teal with one shot in fading daylight), his passionate sense of right and wrong willingly backed up by his piston-like fists, his prairie populist eloquence as a politician, his warm hugs and endless patience, his generosity to neighbors and forgiveness for opponents and fierce loyalty to friends, his rare steaks perfectly prepared over charcoal, and his relentless, almost inhuman work ethic that regularly drove him for 18 and 20 hour stretches and, along with four packs of Camels a day, to a premature death at 49.

But the most important thing about my father was that he was there when I was a kid. Of course he would come two hundred miles through a North Dakota blizzard to be in the audience when I got some forgettable award. Of course he would be the scout master, the coach, the chaperone for the dance, the organizer of 5 a.m. breakfasts and day long duck hunts for my friends, the adviser for the youth group at church, the chief cook and bottle washer of the annual father-son banquet. If I was there, he was there. Of course I could go with him. Of course he had time to talk with me.

So we packed a real relationship into the 16 years between my birth and the day I saw him drop dead. He was there for me. I wish he could have been there with Vicky, Erin, Matthew and me last night at our Father's Day dinner. He'd like this family of mine and he would be the hero to them that he was to me. Doubtless he'd have blunt advice tinged with humor for me as a pater familis.

I know what it's like to have had an involved dad. Ordinary and imperfect as I am, I'm lifted by his example and try to be there in my own children's lives. So on this Father's Day, as I enjoy my family and they enjoy me, I think fleetingly of my own mortality. If I can be a good father - if I can deserve this golden chance that God and my wife have given me - then I will live in my children's hearts.

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