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In Praise of Parents (or, Talk to My Dad)
For a long time, I’ve had a bit of a sting when it came to not having kids. It was something that was thrown in my face as a way to devalue my opinions or me as a person. (I could stay late “because [I] don’t have kids” … I can’t have an opinion on politics “because [I] don’t have kids …” It doesn’t matter what I did this weekend, because it was just me doing it.)
But, as my Dad gets older, I am starting to see something that parents must deal with a lot, and for which they deserve praise.
My Dad lives alone after my Mom, his high-school sweetheart to whom he married nearly 60 years ago, died.
He still gets out and does things and one hobby, in particular, is photography. He takes thousands of pictures a year and always has.
For the past four weeks, he’s been really excited about this photo group meeting. They were going to bring three pictures each that would be shown in a presentation. Each photographer would get a chance to talk about their photos to the group. And there would be mingling before and after.
We do video calls twice a week, and email almost daily, and, like I say, for the past four weeks, he’d describe the pictures he was going to show, talk about which ones he might swap out, talk about what he’d say, talked about meeting people … it was great to see because he was so excited after a pretty rough couple of years. He was like a little kid.
Well, last night the photo group met. All Dad could say today was “I’m not sure I’ll go to these meetings again. Nobody talked to me. They were all in cliques.”
It just broke my heart. I’m actually crying as I write this. The thought of my Dad just standing there, name tag on, looking at his shoes … trying to make eye contact and join a conversation and being rebuffed. He was probably there for a good 30 minutes before the show and at least as long afterward. That must have felt like an eternity to him … it’s just awful.
Yeah, my Dad (and I) can be pretty gruff-looking and neither one of us is good at starting up a conversation. But my Dad takes beautiful pictures and he’s unwaveringly loyal to his friends. He’s got a great sense of humor. He’s a special guy. Why wouldn’t people just talk to him? Is it that damn hard to say “hi” to an older guy standing by himself?
And as I write this, I hear the voice of my Mom, talking about me or my sister and I realize it’s what you parents must feel with your own special ones, as you send them off to school or birthday parties or whatever, hoping they’ll be included, that they’ll have fun and that all the excitement they’ve been building up will be rewarded.
I guess I never really thought about that, so I praise you all for the bravery to face that when you send them out the door.
And please, if you’re part of a photo club in Cincinnati, talk to my Dad.
Published in General
Hi everyone, just to follow up on this:
Dad and I had a great chat on Sunday and I didn’t push him about the photo club because he had actually gone out to the dirt track races (which he loves) and was just ebullient about that. (He just got a new-to-him lens on the cheap and he was playing with it. A couple of pictures of his are at the bottom). Folks chatted with him, he chatted with them … he had a real blast. More than once, he said that “race fans are just the most friendly people to be around.”
Then we had a, um, spirited discussion of the Florida/Disney issue. We didn’t agree, but changed the subject before it got too spirited.
So therefore, the subject of hearing aids also didn’t come up. But he’s planning to go out to dinner at some point at this little Italian place he likes and I’ll probably weave in a question about his hearing around that.
Likewise, when the next photo club meeting is coming up, I’ll ask if he’s planning to go again, and raise the idea of him posting some of his pictures here. (And be ready, he may take you all up on the Zoom offer.)
Thanks again everyone, too. This just shows how much better Ricochet is than any other social media site out there.
Here’s Dad’s pictures. As a note: He probably wouldn’t want me to share this because it wasn’t his best picture of the night, he was just sending me a shot to show me how happy he was with his new lens and editing software. The first picture is what he saw from the grandstand; the second is from when he zoomed in on his computer.
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It’s hard to get a sharp photo of a race car. Nice work!