For Father's Day, Grab His Nose

For Father's Day, Grab His Nose

Late one evening as my dad was grading papers, I gave him something he never forgot. As I eased past his recliner, I grabbed his nose between two knuckles and squeezed. Hard. To this day, I have no idea why. I giggled devilishly, and he levitated from his chair.

“Good Lord!” he shouted. “What’d you do that for?” The tip of his nose had already turned crimson.

“Oh, wow, Dad, I’m sorry,” I choked between chortles. “I didn’t mean to squeeze that hard. I was just playing around.“ I felt bad, but not terribly so. This was the man who had horsed around with us kids millions of times with “horsey bites a pumpkin” moves on our knees, “turkey peeps over a log” tugs to our neck hair and the old “I’ve got your nose” trick. Admittedly, I took his a little more forcibly than was necessary.

He rubbed his inflamed nose and continued to mark papers.

The next morning, he bellowed from behind the bathroom door.

“Kristen Long!” My surname included. I was in trouble. Maybe it was just an empty toilet paper spindle.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, cowering in the hallway.

The door opened and there stood my dad, razor and shaving cream in hand. The urge to sing “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” proved nearly impossible to suppress. Dad had a perfect scarlet circle on the very end of his nose.

“How I am supposed to teach class with this?” He pointed at the offending mark. I tried to throttle a deep-seated need to laugh like a goon. The vision of him teaching college students with a big red dot on his nose didn’t help.

“Ummm, we could try some make –up,” I gasped. We studied the contents of my cosmetics bag. We tried a little Cover Girl. We put on a dab of powder. Now he had a pinkish-beige dot resembling ice cream residue or cake batter. He rubbed it all off with language as colorful as his nose. He headed out the door mumbling something about a bandana. I imagined his students held hostage by a masked instructor, lectures delivered from behind a smuggler’s kerchief. It’s shameful how hard I laughed at poor Dad’s expense.

He taught his classes, conducted his labs and bore the brunt of “red dot clearance sale” jokes all day. For the longest time, he flinched whenever I got near him. But he never punished me, never tried to get even. In no time, he laughed at the entire ordeal. He said he never saw such rapt attention as the day he taught school with a Rudolph nose.

This will be my first Father’s Day without Dad. So much of my daily routine reminds me of him. Silly songs, rambling rhymes, and memories made deeply bittersweet in his absence challenge my ability to smile instead of cry. He was the epitome of a teacher, always showing us kids a better way, the kind way, the way of a wonderful man with admirable character and a brilliant mind. To say I miss him is like saying I’m hungry after an insufferable fast.

What helps more than anything is to recall the example he set as a father. In times of sorrow, he persevered. In times of joy, he laughed loud and long. In times of suffering, he called on his faith. And in everything, he loved with a heart too big for words.

For the dads reading this, I’ll remind you of something no Sunday sales ad will. Whatever gifts you receive today, do not let this day get by you without telling your children what a gift they are to you. Because when all of the ties hang untouched in the closet, when all the tools rest idly in the workshop, when the sound of your father’s voice rises only in your memory, that is what your son or daughter will cling to on Father’s Day. As the ideal thank-you, give them the heartfelt expression of a father’s love and a gentle tweak to the nose.