Maybe father does know best

The Boston Herald

Beverly Beckham

"Hey? What happened around here?" my father said, walking into my kitchen the other day. He looked in the family room, the dining room, the living room. "Your house is so clean. How come?" A person might think this, but how many would dare say it?

Only a parent.

Just a few years ago my father's words would have been the shots that started a mini-war. I would have said: "What do you mean? My house is always clean." And he would have raised his eyebrows and given me the you-can't-pull-the-wool-over-your-father's-eyes look. And I would have been hurt. And he would have been defensive. And a perfectly nice day - maybe a few nice days - would have been ruined.

This day I laughed and said: "You're right, Dad. The house is clean because the dog's been boarded." "You're right" - the words my father most likes to hear.

"Want some coffee?" I asked him and he said, "You're not going to make any of that fancy stuff, are you?" My father doesn't like hazelnut (too sweet) or Starbucks (too strong) or cappuccino. "Can't you make just a regular cup of coffee?" Regular meaning Maxwell House with a little milk. I made regular.

He had come to drop off my birthday present and to talk about his birthday. "Are you coming by on Saturday? When? And will you stay or will you be in a hurry?" My father says I am always in a hurry when I visit and that I don't visit enough. "You always have one foot out the door," he tells me. I don't. But that's how he sees it. And after years of arguing with him, I finally understand. My father wants what we used to have. He wants me upstairs ready to go to Dairy Queen when he yells, "Who wants ice cream?"

We used to celebrate our birthdays together. We'd leave my mother at home and take the subway into the city and see some Audie Murphy western or a war movie. One year we went to a rodeo. For most of the years, I couldn't reach the hanging straps on the train. Then one day I could. We used to go to Nantasket, just the two of us, to the amusement park and ride the rocket ships until we got dizzy. We ate ice cream that dripped all over our hands and bought turkish taffy to devour on the drive home. My father taught me how to ride a bike and drive a car. He told my mother every time I brought home a bad report card: "Don't worry, Dot. She'll do better next time." And he talked my mother into letting me grow up, into letting me wear nylons and lipstick, into letting me go, never knowing that in the end letting go meant that he would lose me, too.

You lose your biggest fans when your kids grow up. No more "You're the best father in the whole world." No more being the center of someone's universe. Children, despite all their promises, leave their parents behind. Some of it is geography, some of it biology and some of it is time. All of it is inevitable. Kids move out and move on and have their own families and separate lives. The love between parent and child always remains but the day-to-day manifestation of it changes.

I take my father out to dinner and stop to talk to the piano player who is a friend and my father says: "Why are you talking to him? You're supposed to be having dinner with me." My father wants my undivided attention. He had it for 20 years. And he's been missing it ever since. But it has taken me until now to understand this. So as he celebrates his birthday tomorrow, I'll celebrate how lucky I am to have him as my dad.