Fathers

Sunday, June 15th, 2025

In February of 1998, I went to a party. The party was for my father, who was 70 years old. It wasn’t the normal birthday party we would celebrate at my parent’s home. Those were normally just with our own family with my mother and we four children. This party was special, being my fathers 70th. He quoted from the Bible:

The days of our years are threescore years and ten (70); and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet their boast is only labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away. Psalm 90:10

The get-together was at a local restaurant where a room had been reserved for our larger group. There were a good number of relatives and quite a few friends attending. It was a good time. My father had reached a kind of goal. I think he believed that every year after that was a bonus, a reward for being a good man and father. He lived on until age 92, passing away in 2020, just before COVID changed our world.

I did not see my father as often in later years. I accepted a new job in the west Chicago suburbs in 1990. While not far away, the increased hours of my new career and a busy life left less time to make the trip. I had a wife and two sons of my own, and time just flew by. Shortly after my second son was born, I had struggles of my own with which to deal. We relocated to the Detroit, Michigan suburbs for family reasons. Trips back to my parent’s home in Illinois became rare.

My father’s dream was that upon retirement, he would purchase a nice fishing boat, and he and I would get together often for fishing trips. He had saved up money to purchase a 19 foot Lund with a 140 horse outboard motor. I contributed to the cost, and thus had a share. Every other year, I would pay the de-winterization and maintenance costs. Over the years there were a couple of occasions where I increased my share, usually by helping with work such as re-shingling his roof or help with an addition to the garage. But, when I moved away, there were less opportunities to join him for fishing.

The size of the boat made it possible to fish on larger bodies of water. He like to go over to Lake Erie to catch perch. Most people went there for Walleyes, but my mother liked to eat the perch better. They would go into the freezer until the winter, when he thawed them out and would fry up a bunch. They were like French Fries, piled up high on a platter.

I remember meeting him over in Ohio. We would fish near Cedar Point. One time the wind was up and we sat rolling back and forth in 3 foot waves. I kept my eyes focused in the distance, watching the roller coasters running the tracks over at Cedar Point’s big theme park, in order to avoid getting seasick. Another time, we traveled up to Leech Lake, Minnesota. We had 4 days to fish and were trying for our limit of perch. We could have 2 days of limit. For two of us, that was 300 perch, enough to last most of the winter. We fished our usual area, but after 3 days, only had about 30 fish. We ate some of those in our cabin. On the last day, we could only fish for about 4 hours, as we needed to get back to the resort to pack up for the trip back home the next day. We tried our usual area for about an hour and still caught nothing, so we move deeper into the bay. We started to catch a few fish. We had 10 dozen minnows for bait. By usual bait house rules, that probably translated to about 150 minnows. We ran out. So we would cut a strip of belly skin off of a perch already caught and tried to use that for bait. We caught more. Finally, after about 3 1/2 hours, my father asked “how many fish do we have?” I replied that I had lost count, but probably close to our limit. So we pulled anchor and headed for the resort. We docked and headed to the cleaning house and started fileting perch. And we counted. After a couple of hours, having fileted 300 fish, we stopped and released the rest.

That was our last trip to Leech Lake. Memories are now lost in the fog of years, but that may have been my last trip in the boat. I just did not have opportunities to go. One day, I received a letter from my father. In it was a check. He had sold the boat. It just had become to difficult for him to launch alone. His reaction time was no longer as good when towing it behind his van. The check was for my share of the sale price. I never expected that. I called and told him I didn’t need the money and he should keep it. He refused.

I never wanted to move so far away. I knew when I did, that for him, it probably meant the end for his retirement dream. My heart has not been broken very many times in my life, but that was one, worse because I did it to myself. I didn’t have a choice. Two little boys depended on me.

In 2001, my effort to hold my family together failed. I became a single father, raising my 2 sons by myself. At that point, I turned to my parents and family. I started making more regular trips back to their home in Illinois. I wanted to make sure my sons would remember who their grandparents were. We made the trip most years for Thanksgiving, Christmas, or New Years. We would make trips each summer and sometimes, when I would just get so tired, that I needed help. I would often sleep, while the boys played card games with my parents and sister’s family. A few times, my father would walk them over to the ponds by their condo and fish for a little while. My boys still remember playing Phase 10 or Uno in the evenings. Those were great family memories.

Memories are often bitter sweet. Each time I would make the trip, I would notice how my father was a little less agile and moved more slowly. When we left for the drive back to Michigan, I would wonder if it would be the last time I would see him. Eventually, they moved to Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, near my next younger sister. We saw them less after that, but still got up their once in a while. As my boys got older, it was often just me and one or the other son. They had school activities, or jobs, and finally college that took much of their time.

Today is Father’s day. I wish I could go catch some perch with him or sit around the kitchen table playing a card game with him and the boys.

I did a lot of things in my life. Had lots of adventures, learned to whitewater canoe, Telemark ski, and live in the wilderness. The hardest thing I ever did, was raise two sons. Being a father is not easy, but I was lucky to have two of the best boys imaginable. And I had the best example for a father.

“The hardest part about being a father is realizing you are raising the ones you can’t live without, to be able to live without you.”

I did that. I raised two sons to be successful adults. I am very proud of both of them. For 18 years, raising my sons was the most important thing I ever did. I wasn’t perfect, but I tried my best. I hope they agree. It was also the best years of my life. They are grown now and have their own careers and families. Those best years are in the past, but…

When life gets hard
And you feel alone, remember
You mean the world to someone,
And that someone calls you DAD.

I know that my father worried about me. He worried about the hip problem I had for most of my life. He also worried about how I would do when I reached old age. He knew I would be alone, that I had no wife to take care of me like my mother did him. I am out here in the mountains, camped in the forest. No one sits with me now. But in my mind, he does…my father.