Dad

Four Generations - Thanksgiving 2016

It is said that young daughters believe that the authority of the whole world rests in their fathers. Growing up, this was doubly true for me.  My father, Jack Ryan to his friends, Jackie to his mother, and John G. to strangers, was a man that I saw live a life filled with authority.  He was a manager at work, a deacon at our church, and a strong member of our local community.

My mother, a type B, traditional, Catholic woman of Mexican descent enjoyed the safety and steadiness of my father’s structure.  She would later tell me that her father was the same--patriarchal and strong.  To me, my father's rules were old fashioned and rigid.  Dad was from a different world, I reasoned, a generation that was fading away as mine was taking shape.  Instead of trying to be the perfect daughter, I challenged every boundary that my parents lay down.  I was bold, sneaky, and filled with the classic deceptive attributes of a rebellious teenager.  When I was twenty-three, I realized I was wrong. 

Big time.

It is impossible to entertain any thought of my father without thinking of how he endured these young adult years.  He was strong, unwavering.  He never budged.  

At twenty-five I married Mario, my beautiful mercy straight from God.  I couldn’t believe he loved me—but he did.  As our kids grew, I saw him be a father in very similar ways.  This is what makes me smile now.  The attributes I absolutely challenged growing up are the ones I considered to be golden to our family.  These strengths made the men in my life lead their families in an upside-down world.

When Mario and I moved to Africa, we began a life of being full-time ministry.  During this time, my father was a great source of wisdom to us.  He charged us not to neglect our own spiritual lives for the sake of ministry—because he knew how easy it was to get lost in the work.  When it was time for us to come home, he made it clear that he thought it was a good decision.  His counsel over the years has been unequaled.

Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen), the author of Out of Africa, once said about the male species: “Man reaches the highest point of lovableness at 12 to 17 — to get it back, in a second flowering, at the age of 70 to 90.”  Today my father is 83—and I agree that he is in his second flowering of loveableness. 

Today my Dad is reflective, wise, and easy to talk to.  He beta-reads most of my writing, which I ask him to do because he is such an avid reader.  He is also unafraid to tell me when my work could be better.  Oh, the nerve!

Happy Birthday, Dad.  You cannot imagine how grateful I am for you.  You are one of the greatest heroes in our life –and I get to be your daughter.  I love you!

Dad surrounded by family

Dad

Everyone has one Dad.

Mine had a distinguished voice, read more than he watched TV, lisened to classical music and insisted on dinner at the table ever night.  He was also pretty religious.

“Do you think Dad would have been a priest if it weren’t for Mom?”  I asked my sister, Patty one morning as we got ready for school.

“Yes, dummy.  Everyone knows that.”

We all assumed it.  We were more Catholic than the Pope.

Dad came home at 4:45 every day, and since we lived in a court, I could look out the front window and see his car make a wide left turn and slow down before it hit the driveway.  Every day the same time.  He’s come in, kiss my Mom, look at the mail and then greet his kids.  We knew that no matter what we were doing we had better stand up and greet him like we meant it.

Dad had a working knowledge of calculus, physics, English and American literature and most music.  He never got into Rock and Roll, to our dismay.  We usually drove everywhere listening to Mozart or some kind of jazz. Nevertheless, Dad worked as a correctional counsellor at a State Prison.

During baseball season, Dad watched the Red Sox (when it was televised) or else he listened to them on the radio.  Dad was pure Boston, even though he had lived in Northern California since he married my Mom.  Californian and a husband because of my Mom....

Today my father turns eighty.  Mario and I are on vacation with him in Boston.  Today we’ll see the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum; tonight he and Mario will see the Red Sox at home.  I’m not supposed to tell him, but the screen in Centerfield will say “Happy 80^th Birthday John Ryan” right before everyone sings Sweet Caroline. 

It’s one of the rewards of living his whole life as a Red Sox fan...and for living in California, I guess. 

Happy Birthday, Dad.  

I love you

Dad

My favorite pictures of my Dad and me are decoupaged to a canoe oar that is in my parent’s entryway.  The pics were chosen by sister, Colleen from the wealth of camping pictures we took every summer on the Ryan family vacations.

It was our time. 

One year, we decided to buy and inflatable raft and we had to have an oar, so we bought a wooded one that didn’t even fit through the loops of the raft, purposefully put there by engineers that realized that kids drop the oar while they are rowing – often.  The raft didn’t last, and the oar became a tattered artefact in the storage shed, until my artistic sister decided to make it a memorial of our many camping trips together as a family.  I look at it every time I am there. 

My father was born in Boston, an only child, in the first baby boom.  The only child of a mother over forty, he was destined to become the focus of all of her attention.   My grandfather (whom I never met) was a Boston fireman, and died when my father was entering his teen years.  This made his mother even more attached to him.

There are memories of growing up that obstruct a good view of him.  My Nana (his mom) lived with us; he had five children; he was busy with work; he loved sports and watched them often.  My dad wasn’t the active, engaged parent that my mom was.  Mom’s role was all about relationship, connecting and dealing with the day to day nonsense of all of us: five kids seven years apart. 

Dad came home from work, every day at 4:45 (he stopped working at 4:30).  He would come in, kiss my mother, greet all of us, turn on his stereo and get a beer and peanuts.  He’d sit for a half an hour and read the paper in the living room and my mother would come in and debrief with him.  If any of us had anything to ask him, this was the time to do it. 

We would have dinner at 6, and afterward my dad would maybe watch TV with us for an hour and we would be sent off to bed.  Years of this routine...years. 

When I was fifteen, I began a season of rebellion that lasted for about eight years.  Those words, “season of rebellion” are the ones I use to speak about how I systematically broke my parents hearts with one decision after another.  I acted as if I were insulated from all pain, while I shot it out of myself like lightning bolts to lesser beings.   My father’s reaction was to make sure I knew it would not be tolerated, and that lasted for years. 

This made me see my father as a regimented, stern fellow (which he probably was, to some extent).  At work, he was a supervisor, in a management position that demanded strength and strong decisions.  At home it was not much different, but he softened a lot around my mother, who became kind of a translator for him. 

My Uncle Jim, a larger-than-life mayor of the city was easier for me to relate to.  Even Uncle Jim was a little unnerved that I had a skewed view of my dad. 

“He has a bigger heart than I do,” he once said, candidly.

I looked at him and raised my eyebrows (imagine an eighteen-year-old with an attitude).  The everyday routines and disciplinary experiences blocked my vision to see my father  truthfully for who he really was inside.

 Who I’ve grown to know him to be.

Thank God, my  father has unfolded into a better picture of himself before me.  There has been a lot of health and forgiveness and genuine desire to understand each other between us.  I have grown to see him as a sacrificial, kind, and genuinely compassionate man who can relate to most people.  Instead of the stern prison warden, he has become an approachable man who has known the pain of loving and releasing those around him, as they are called elsewhere.  Even me.

Yesterday, at the Pick and Pay, I was conversing with my Aunt and Uncle who are here, visiting us.  Hearing us speak, in our heavy American accents, she turned to me and said  “Have you ever watched ‘Extreme Couponing’?” 

I laughed, thinking of my father, who cuts coupons and lives (proudly) knowing that he has beaten the stores at their own game.  “Know it?” I said loudly.  “My dad LIVES it!”  My Aunt and Uncle laughed with me.

It reminded me, walking away from her, that today is my father’s birthday, and my heart sank.  I will not be with my dad for his birthday for the sixth year in a row.  I miss him, and wish I could be there to hug him. 

I would tell him that, despite my rebellion and my attitude, I have good memories of growing up.  I would tell him that he was a strong example of discipline and self-control.  He provided a safe place to call home, and has made me wish I could have done the same thing.  I would tell him that his influence in Spiritual, musical and intellectual matters have been the greatest influence that any man could have given a daughter.

Even then, it would not be enough to encapsulate the love I feel for him... the deep and profound respect that can only be gained from years of seeing a man of noble character, trying to live as a woman of noble character.  I think God has played a big part of this, and the gift of seeing my father as someone greater than my Dad, and someone as tender as a Daddy  is priceless. 

Happy Birthday, Dad.  I love you.  

Dad and Alicia 1994