I Love the Way Men Love
Whenever I see a small aircraft descend past my apartment, with drooping lights against a dark sky and darker ridgeline, I think of a poem by Ada Limón, called “Accident Report in the Tall, Tall Weeds.” There’s a section that reminds me so much of my dad:
My dad, in his every action, teaches those around him that love is not just a feeling: it’s a way of life. When he cares for people, he cares for them. And even the people he doesn’t care for, he’ll take care of.
Dad’s a volunteer with the local Search and Rescue team. He’s a brilliant data analyst and researcher who’s been awarded for his work, but who seems most proud of the students who became confident after taking the developmental math classes he’d teach when grant funding was thin. One former student chanced upon him in an outdoors store in Seattle and was eager to tell him that–after Dad told their class that if they could do this math, they could do math at any major university–they’d taken it to heart. They eventually transferred from the community college to UW to study mathematics, and they credited that path to him. I’ve heard him talk more about the school backpack program (filling and donating backpacks with the supplies students might need) than about when his research group won NASA’s contractor of the year award.
Since Dad’s a leading expert in wake turbulence, his models help determine safety regulations around the world for how close airplanes can land behind each other. He used to have me go through his conference presentations when I was a kid, listening intently to my feedback on the graphs, visuals, and transitions. I still picture the spiraling vortices, a celebratory riot of crepe paper fluttering invisible around every moving thing.
While Dad loves a fun problem to work through, he’s usually guided by the question, how can this make the world a safer, better place? His current job as an engineer with Aireon–a company that can track flights via satellite, thus ensuring no more missing planes–folds into this guiding ethic, too.
It’s not all on the scale of saving the world–lots of it is in recognizing that every small life is a world in itself to save. Growing up, I watched my dad make breakfast to order every morning. Countless family friends have requested his scone recipe and raved about his scrambled eggs or Swedish pancakes. I watched him wash and massage my mom’s tired rock-climber feet, fix appliances we didn’t realize were broken, and listen earnestly to my friends talk, as children, as teenagers, as adults. When I was seventeen, one friend told me, teary eyed, that my dad was the first adult who’d ever listened to him talk about his life and treated him like a human being.
At twenty, I watched my then-therapist tear up after I told her about how my dad had picked me up from the airport when I returned early from a failed semester in Hyderabad. As he drove us over Snoqualmie pass, the dark trees a soft blur, he didn’t say the words I expected. He didn’t say, “We love you, regardless.” Instead, he told me that he was proud of me. Proud that I’d pushed myself far enough to find my limits. Proud that I’d made a safety call, like a mountaineer at turnaround time, and had the courage to bail. To choose my life over a reputation for never quitting. Proud that I had quit. And happy I made it home. The therapist was embarrassed about crying: “I’m not used to hearing about dads like yours,” she admitted.
I’ve never seen my dad act ashamed of his tears. Though I haven’t seen him cry often, he’s never hidden his grief or joy. After helping me carry my books and boxes up the stairs into my freshman-year dorm room, he cried saying goodbye. After his sister was diagnosed with stage four cancer, he hung up the phone and cried in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen. Then, a few days later, he insisted that she move in with us so that he could drive her over the pass to all her hospital appointments. Dad’s laughed so hard at my sister’s Cards Against Humanity jokes that tears slip out. Last spring, he gave a beautiful speech at his mom’s funeral, and he read a poem he’d written through all of our tears.
His mom is buried next to his brother. I can’t help it. I love the way men love.
My dad’s older brother was training to be a pilot when he died in a crash. My dad was still a teenager.
Uncle Jeff died on impact with the frozen lake, they think, but his instructor made it out of the plane and the water. Still, the instructor died of exposure a day later, before anyone could find the downed plane. I see my dad’s love for his brother in so much of his life: the wake vortices, the bent toward safety regulations, the volunteer work with Search and Rescue, the career jump from research to being part of a project that could mean a plane never goes missing. That could mean finding the survivors. Protecting people from a crash to survive.
My dad’s life is a model of love and devotion in action. Of protecting people’s hearts, their health, their hopes. His commitment shines through in everything he does. His career, his relationships, his endurance expeditions–kayaking the Inside Passage, biking alongside the Pacific Crest Trail–his ability to commit to the bit: a seriously silly sense of humor. A meticulously built regency-era outfit for attending my themed 27th birthday party. A reputation for writing the most moving letters on birthdays, anniversaries, Valentine’s Days. A love that I can’t help but love, and one that teaches me how.
