Dad Musters Out

My dad has been gone for seven years now.  In a real sense he's been gone longer as dementia stole most of what he was a few years before that.  Are we still "us" when the recent memories are gone and what is left are the memories and emotions of our earlier selves?  A topic for another day.

On this Father's Day 2023 I'll be tipping my cap to my own boys who have stepped up to the world of fatherhood.  The late nights with fussy little ones.  The debris fields of legos.  The joys, the worries.  I know that world well.  And through it I know my sons.

But how well do we know our fathers?

In the case of my own there are gaps in my knowledge.  He was not a talkative fellow.  He came from a family of stoic German farmers and then went into medicine where you know, you hear many things you can't discuss.  He wrapped himself up in his career.  In part this was just the work ethic of a farm boy applied to an endlessly demanding job.  But to some extent it was probably to avoid some of the difficulties of our world.  But there is much to respect in a man (equally so of course for a woman) who digs in and works hard for their family's future.  If there were not enough times for us to do stereotypical father-son things like playing catch, well, even a father's shortcomings have their uses.  They showed me the things I needed to do better with my own boys.  My shortcomings will have similar instructional value.

Recently I came upon some unusual documents.  They relate to my dad leaving military service in the late 1940's.  

Dad went through undergrad and med school on an accelerated track designed to train up large numbers of military physicians.  He graduated just after the end of hostilities and spent a few years in the late 40's working in Occupied Germany.  He told very few stories of that era.  I guess he considered hitching a ride on a supply plane during the Berlin airlift.  But never an adventurer he thought better of it.  He got really sick with pneumonia and being the only doctor in a satellite aid station/hospital had to treat himself.  He was intrigued by the evolving discipline of psychiatry and considered visiting Vienna, then the mecca for such studies.  I'm told he even was "analyzed", but the image of my quiet to the point of socially awkward dad laying on a couch and baring his soul...well it does not compute.  

In 1949 he finished his hitch and went home to the family farm outside a sleepy Minnesota village.

Here's a couple of pages of his "inventory", the things he took home from Germany.

I was interested to know that the military mind regards it as necessary for a Captain returning home to have his baggage inspected by a PFC.  Including, on a page I'm not copying, how many pairs of underwear he was packing.

As to the things he acquired most of them look like the sort of Nick Naks you bring home for Mom.  I know a couple of the beer steins are still around, rather nice Pre-WWI German regimental items in fact.  The rest of it?  Where is the "strong box".  And did he really bring home a toy monkey, two harmonicas and a pair of sandals?

Maybe you never completely know your father.  But perhaps when you become one yourself you can squint and just make out the distant outlines of who he was long ago when you were young.

I'll close by wishing my two sons who are in the ranks of Fatherhood the best of days.  It's hard work but the best job ever.