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About my Dad ::
I noticed that my brother James posted what he said at our Dad’s funeral two weeks ago.
Here’s what I nervously scribbled to myself in the hour before the service, and spoke in the middle of James’ bit (well actually, I improvised a bit, but this is what I planned):
The last time I saw my Dad was when I visited Ithaca in August. I’m very happy that he came to hear me perform music then and that he knew I was starting to quit smoking. He was so concerned for me that he cried. That helped me resolve to quit a couple of weeks later.
When I returned to California, I began playing my housemate’s guitar every day. (I have very little technique, but I can find the notes.) Mostly I just played “Blackbird” by the Beatles. I still remember Dad playing that record, that song when I was a little boy in London. It’s always brought me close to tears.
I remember Dad bringing home the Sergeant Pepper’s album when I was even younger.
Mom played the piano, reading music. Dad only played by ear and from memory. I began playing like Mom, but it took me many years to understand how Dad played the way he did.
In 9th grade I began learning computer programming. When Dad got a personal computer for the family, at Christmas 1981, I began spending a lot of my free time on it. When he got an Apple Macintosh in 1984 or 85, I was completely hooked. Today I still program computers, working on the audio system software at Apple.
So much of who I am is because he was who he was.
When I was a kid, we went to a LOT of Cornell hockey games together. So it’s easy for me to imagine that we’re at one right now, with him sitting next to me. I’m sipping a hot chocolate feeling like the luckiest kid in the world for having such a great dad.
More than one person remarked on how calmly I spoke in front of the room full of somewhere approaching 200 people. I joked that after speaking at developers’ conferences, I was used to it, or that I was medicated.
But this week I’ve been reading John Irving’s Until I Find You; there’s a scene where young Jack, learning to act, is taught to channel his attention toward, rather than the crowd in the audience, an “audience of one,” just one person. Jack chose his long-missing father. Looking back at my moment of calm on the stage (despite crying before and afterwards), I know I was speaking to my father (not-so-long-missing) too.
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