April 6, 2018 at 1:53 p.m.
REFLECTION
My Dad: St. Joseph in the flesh
My Dad: St. Joseph in the flesh
He was a simple, blue-collar, hard-working man, who, as I recall, only ever missed one day of work. If he caught a cold, he swore by a drink of ginger and hot water to make him better overnight. It always did.
If Dad had any personal hopes and dreams, I never heard about them. He was a contented man of simple wants and pleasures, few that they were.
One pleasure was his homespun tool shop, which he set up in the basement to fix things that others would throw away. I suppose you could have called him a Luddite -- averse to parting with that which could be made useful again.
Coming of age during the Great Depression, he saved every useful piece from broken appliances that, of themselves, were beyond repair. He would often say, and with real joy, "Oh, I've got just the right part for that." And he inevitably did.
Dad saved a small fortune for family and friends. Were he alive today, he'd have a field day with all the thrown-away things that exist.
Apart from what he did at home, I recall two particular places where my Dad found himself swimming in the luxury of broken things. Sisters of St. Joseph in Albany can attest that he fixed the plumbing at their residence -- without a plumber's license.
At a local mission he brought to life again venetian blinds aplenty. (Have you ever tried to restring them?) He repaired irons, lamps and all manner of once-dead appliances. The mission's basement was swept clean and filled up again, with every piece fixed and working.
Dad would also create new things out of wood -- which, for him, was nearly a sacrament, so devoted to woodworking was he. Dad was St. Joseph in the flesh to me, long before I joined the local community bearing St. Joseph's name.
Without any lessons, Dad put in hardwood floors in three apartments. He sanded and refinished three end tables built in the 1930s. They were resurrected to a sheer smoothness and a glorious shine. He did it all with such delight and devotion, with unending patience -- and, clearly, long hours of work on his knees -- that, when he finished, his offering was nothing short of perfection.
Dad never earned a cent for any of this, because he never asked for one. Joy and delight were his only rewards for having helped another.
Always busy making things tick and run like new was another specialty of his. I remember Dad's old Chevy from the early 1930s, with a top made of some kind of tarred material. He kept it in tip-top shape, taking it apart every summer, putting all the pieces on the sidewalk, cleaning and greasing them, then popping them back in as if they were parts of a puzzle he'd mastered years ago. He kept that Chevy until the 1950s, when parts were no longer available and he had to get a newer car.
Dad was an activist for workers' rights, too. As a union man with the Teamsters and as shop steward at the company for which he worked, he spoke up on behalf of his fellow workers' needs, wages and workers' compensation.
In that manner, I came to know what God was like: Dad doing godly things, making whole again what was broken, mending everything that was capable of being mended, as if he'd formed a covenant with brokenness.
Dad was an epiphany -- a real revelation to me of God and His kingdom already present in the work of my Dad's hands and heart.
Lest I forget, he also accompanied me in my childhood years to church every Sunday morning, and he waited for me on the corner with his brother, my uncle Leo.
When I got a spot in the choir in fourth grade, I'd ask him every Sunday, "How did we do? How was the singing?" We had a huge repertoire of French songs for the entire year and special feast days. I was always eager to hear his response.
He always said we were good, then added, "But you could sing louder." He was always encouraging the more.
I would dare to ask his opinion one more time, but I don't think he'd hear me, wrapped up as he surely is in the sounds of a heavenly choir. I like to imagine such a scenario, in which Dad flourishes and shines like finished, polished, shiny wood.
(Sister Joyce, a retired teacher of all levels from elementary school to college, now volunteers in the communications department at St. Joseph's Provincial House in Latham.)[[In-content Ad]]
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