Like my Father

Last week my wife and I were asked to talk in Church. It wasn't necessarily a good time for us, but our wonderful Bishop thought it might help us to contemplate the assigned topic, "To Be Like Him." The Him in the subject was, of course, Jesus Christ, but I always like to open a talk with a story from my life that helps me personalize the message. When I thought about this topic, one event leaped immediately to mind to illustrate this point. I'd like to record it here, too.

The summer before my 24th birthday was a great time for me. I was living in Seattle, doing work I thought was very important, and doing pretty well at it. It was a job others considered difficult, though it seemed custom-made for me at the time. I was working at a testing lab inside a facility owned by Boeing, working for another company on a big government program. I had a daylight basement apartment in a beautiful house on the shore of Lake Washington, with a dock 20 steps from my front door where my sailboat was tied.

I worked the night shift at the Boeing lab, 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. At 7, when our shift ended, my co-workers and I would clear our workspaces, return to the office, then go to breakfast in the Boeing cafeteria. After breakfast, we would return to the office, finish our paperwork for the day, handle the beginning of the day's email traffic, then leave for home, a 10-minute drive for me.

Returning to my apartment, I would leave a trail of clothes as I passed through the house. I would find a pair of shorts to wear, grab my sailing bag, and head for the boat. Slipping away from the dock was the best part of my day, something I did nearly every day. Normally I would sail until I was too tired to continue, then pull into home or one of the many lakeside parks that surround Lake Washington. Once safely tied up, I would fold the mainsail over the small cabin on my boat, crawl into the tiny V-berth below, and go to sleep, using a sail bag or a life preserver as a pillow. Later, when the sun sank low on the horizon, I would wake from the change in the light, motor or sail home, shower, and start my day. I was an idyllic existence for me.

On this particular day, my usual plans were foiled by a lack of wind. It was a hot summer for Seattle. I sat and bobbed with the sails flopping for a half hour before I gave up and folded them, staring at the end of my dock only a few hundred yards away. After realizing I wasn't ready to go back to my empty aparment or the loud rock band practicing in the garage next door, I scrounged in my tiny cabin and came up with a bucket, scrub brush, and bottle of boat soap.

I spent that noon scrubbing and dousing the boat, enjoying the heat of the sun and cold of the water. When I had finished scrubbing the decks and cockpit and standing on the back of the boat to make sure everything had drained, I was overcome with weariness. The end of the dock was still only a few hundred yards away, so I lowered my little motor and motored slowly back to the dock. I quickly secured the boat and headed home, wanting a shower and bed.

As I walked through my living room towards the back of the apartment, picking up the clothes I had scattered in my haste that morning, I developed the eery feeling that my father was in my apartment somewhere. Entering the bathroom, the feeling became so strong I even called out for him, looking around my small apartment and wondering if he had decided to fly to Seattle and surprise me. After searching the apartment for a couple of minutes, I returned to the bathroom to shower and it hit me why I had such a strong feeling he was there: I smell just like my father.

When I was a teen, my father did small contractor jobs for people he knew, and his 3 sons provided the labor pool. We paved driveways, finished basement rooms, and other small jobs like this. Looking back on it now, I realize it was a wonderful way to learn to work, and to draw closer to my brothers and father. My opinion at the time may have differed a bit. One thing it definitely taught me, though, was the scent of my Father's sweat.

To discover this startling similarity at this age, when I was just beginning to really see the world through an adult's eyes, was quite a revelation. Over the next two years I found many more physical resemblances that surprised me, because I have always looked so much like my mother's family. I also came to understand and respect my father much more than ever before, and we became much closer to each other. Now that I'm a father too, I have immense respect and love for my father, for the sacrifices he made for my family and for me personally.