The annual Father’s Day post

I like the picture of my Dad, above, but that’s not how I remember him. For one thing, his background didn’t always have a flag motif, but it was always flying in his heart.

My folks didn’t adopt me till my Dad was about 50, so all I remember is the sweet old bald guy who was kinda round and wore thick glasses. The only thing that looks familiar in the photo above is the baldness and the cigarette.

This has been a shitty summer. Losing Woody last month (not unexpectedly, but abruptly as hell…), then losing my favorite pundit mancrush Tim Russert yesterday… hearing about it on the car radio while stuck in traffic after the middlin’ “The Incredible Hulk” movie...

All the bad stuff has been really bad, and the good stuff, only middlin’. The result is, I just haven’t been on my A-Game lately.

Here’s a f’rinstance. I went to a friend’s wedding last weekend while The Missus and Man Cub were out of town, visiting her parents. The photo inset into this paragraph is how I wore my tie for the first 20 minutes of the church part of the event till The Last Boy Scout showed up (just in the nick of time, the way superheroes always do!) and gave me a quick makeover. But look at that. It’s friggin’ ridiculous. It doesn’t look so much like a fashion faux pas as it does a failed suicide attempt. And the fact that I decided to grab a couple of establishing shots of myself before the wedding proper, so there’s evidence of my sartorial clumsiness…

It hasn’t been easy being Fang lately. I decided to bake a cake for The Missus’ birthday and this is what happened:

The dessert equivalent of The Necktie Fiasco. Again, not a confidence builder.

My saving grace has been the boy, and that brings me back to the point of this post.

The Missus does the best she can handling my eccentricities and moods, but she’s only human after all. Plus, compared to the boy, she tends to overthink things. I don’t need The Delicate Treatment, I need to be dragged back into the land of the living, kicking and screaming, with reckless abandon. That used to be Woody’s job – a job he excelled at, frequently at great risk to life and limb – but now that onerous responsibility has fallen to my son, who has never proven himself less than fully up to the task. Even when I’m acutely aware that I’ve become that permissive hippie parent in line at the counter I didn’t used to want to get stuck behind and the boy has turned his indignation up to 11, there’s never a moment when I’m not fully engaged, and proud as hell to be his Dad.

There was a moment today when I was in my office, working, wallowing in MSNBC’s wall-to-wall coverage of Mr. Russert’s untimely passing, and the boy was watching “Robots” out in the front room by himself while The Missus was out shopping for dirt. The people on my TV are telling me all about Russert’s devotion to his family, and my son is sitting alone in another room watching a movie I could be watching with him. I’m happy to report that is a fuck-up that I corrected right then and there.

So this is to say thanks to my father and my son, who gave me a name and a reason for living, respectively. Without you guys, I really would be nothing. Steve Earle wrote a song about it, and ala my friend The Lovely Salome, I will close this brief, photo-heavy homage with some of his lyrics appropriate to the occasion. Thanks Steve, I couldn’t have said it better. These lyrics would have been nothing without you.

Well, I'm nothin' without you
It don't matter what I do
If I win or if I lose
Sweetheart I'm nothin' without you

I'm a beacon in the night
To show the way until it's light
I'm a stumbler in the dark
When I can't say what's in my heart

I'm a poet just the same
Every time I speak your name
I'm just a shadow when I'm blue
But I'm nothin' without you

“I’m Nothin’ Without You” © Steve Earle