This morning, for the first time in my adult life, I inadvertently pulled the thread on my first conscious memory of being aware of a song...like, "knowing" it, you know what I mean? I was probably (maybe) six or seven years old...digging around in my old man's closet looking for those "Stories of the Bible" film strips we used to watch on the living room walls on rainy days. (I was the youngest and brattiest so I had to be in charge of setting up the projector and cueing the tape machine.). Mixed in with The Wonderful World of Sam Cooke and reels of Pop's favorite sermons by his Christian heroes, was a well-worn copy of Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys. I had seen and ignored it many times before, but that day was different for whatever reason and though I don't know why, I abandoned my search for the films and wound the tape on this, unbeknownst to me at the time, seminal recording.
I've thought about and written about the origins of my love for music many times giving credit to many sources, events and people, but I honestly never thought my dad had anything to do with it. In reflective hindsight, I'm not sure I was even consciously aware of music prior to that exact moment. I now realize that those rando few minutes all those years ago triggered a love for music in me that continues to grow 40+ years later. This morning, a Beach Boys song innocently rotated onto my Sunday morning Pandora station and after the first few bars, I almost literally collapsed. I hadn't yet connected those dots that I just did up there and it nearly crippled me. Everybody is a Beach Boys "fan", but Brian Wilson's beautiful and in many ways tragic life has always fascinated me as much or more than the amazing songs he wrote. This morning for the first time, I was forced to confront the possibility that my father shared that fascination at some level. You would have had to have known my old man to understand the shocking dichotomy of what I just said. It hasn't quite been a year since he passed and not a day goes by that I'm not reminded of something that he taught me...it's rare that I discover a whole other new thing.
He would've been about a month shy of his 21st birthday when Pet Sounds was released and I legit cannot imagine what life was like for him...what he must've been like before Vietnam and all of that. He wasn't my dad then, and that's all I ever knew him to be. I would've been in Mississippi for his 74th birthday today had he lived until next Wednesday, but he died on a Saturday in August last year and we put him in the ground a few days later on a wicked hot Monday. I haven't been the same since.
It's not all bad though. In addition to this little surf rock epiphany, his death reawakened within me the curiosity I've always had about the power and purity of one's spirit and the transformational strength of hope that I lost somewhere along my path to here. His death forced me to remember the responsibility that I have to seek and give joy. In the months since, I've rediscovered through my memory of him and the nearly perfect example that he gave me of how I should treat every human being on earth with the compassion and kindness and respect that they deserve by virtue of nothing more than their having been born a human being. People who know me now know that I'm insufferably fond of saying, "Today is a brand new day, full of hope and promise." That's not something he would've ever said - he wouldn't have dared to be that direct. I flippantly give credit to my newfound belief in Stoic philosophy but the truth is I'm invoking his memory and celebrating his life every time that I say it. I'm still trying to and may always be trying to learn to be the type of man he was...to live as simply as he did...to teach in the subtle way that he taught. He wasn't perfect and he was not a saint. He was my father though and I wouldn't be who I am today if he hadn't shown me how to be. The biggest regret of my life is that I never told him exactly that while he was still here.
There's a lot of things I could say...recount old memories and all that whatever. Those memories are all mine though and they should and will remain between me and him. I love you old man. Happy Father's Day. "Wouldn't It Be Nice" if you were still around?
