This is a Father’s Day post! because my dad is great!  I’m not very good at writing about things that are really important to me in a good way – my words get extra stilted for some reason.  But that’s not a good reason not to tell you that my dad is great, and important to me, and I’m really proud to be his daughter.

A quick sketch of my father can be summed up with three activities:

• hiking
• reading
• playing guitar/songwriting

I think of him this way – his core leisure activities – in part because growing up I mostly only saw him on the weekends.  To solve the puzzle of our child care, my mother worked daytime, office-type jobs, and my father worked evenings as a cook.  This made a pretty even split when my sister and I were very young.  (I have very early memories of the tar-paper roof outside the back of the kitchen, and of playing with my sister in the plush, fancy dining area (empty before opening) at that first restaurant, called The Lily.)  But once we were in school, it meant we really didn’t see him during the week; he always came home so late.  So, for my own mental picture of my father, the other important piece is:

• restaurants

Even though it’s not the first thing that comes to my mind when picturing my father (I should probably throw ‘boating’ into the mix, too), his work has had a big impact on my relationship with him.  And I don’t know if it’s despite this or because of this, but I’ve always been extremely proud of my father and his accomplishments at work – he’s a hard worker, and, like his mother before him, cooking is something he’s fundamentally good at.

To brag more than a little, here are two examples:

1. After he left the 2^nd restaurant (numbering based on my child-fuzzy memory), to go to the better, 3^rd restaurant (that he just now retired from), 2^nd restaurant had to hire two people to replace him.

2. When 3^rd restaurant got bought by a new owner, new owner tried to cut back my dad’s hours because his wage was just too high.  But, he soon learned that was a bad idea, and that my dad’s wage was absolutely merited.  Then, when my father started talking about retirement, not-so-new-owner cut back my dad’s hours by a whole day – while simultaneously raising his wage so that he’d make the same amount of money (plus tips!).  By then, not-so-new owner knew they needed the extra day-per-week to train the guys who were going to have to replace my dad (who ran the huge steak-house grill, a very finicky, high-demand, one-person-at-a-time-only job).

My dad turned down being manager at that restaurant at least once, because he had no interest in being on a salary – he wanted his time accounted for.  But I also know he took his work seriously.  Working in a restaurant means you’re working with people a lot, and all their various needs and demands, not even counting the customers.  But he didn’t belittle that.  He’s always been interested in being flexible, in finding solutions, and in getting what needed to get done done.

And he is absolutely the standard I hold my own self up to when it comes to judging myself good at my job – and usually find myself wanting.  I’m proud of my work, but my dad is a higher bar still.  My job is quite different than his, of course – scientific programmer versus cook.  But these are both jobs of service, and he and I both viewed/view our work in that way.  Being useful gives our work value.  (It’s one of the reasons I know I’m happier as a programmer than I would have been as a scientist.*)  Being useful means that, with our work, we have accomplished measurable good.

(*note: I do think the work of scientists is also useful – my work is to enable theirs after all – just not on anything like a quick-turnaround timescale; and I’m impatient.)

But sometimes, I’ve heard my dad say that, out of the family, his work was ‘less important.’

Oh, that hurts me.

I am so proud of my father and his work.  The quality and the intentionality of his work.  And the measurable good.  So I hate to think of him viewing it as ‘unimportant.’  As I try to tell him every time he says that: he literally makes many people happy every work night.  To me, that sounds like a gift – if, admittedly, a hard-won, hard-worked-for gift.

And granted, ‘unimportant’ does seem to be how our society views restaurant work.  That’s not because that view is true, but because we live in a society that, on the whole, devalues service and devalues labor.  It is a sad sickness of our society that, collectively, we think this way.  So many people labor for us, and that work is a hard-won gift – one that, too often, we don’t give any thanks for.

And do believe that, holy-moly is restaurant work hard, manual labor!  My dad can’t 100% straighten his arms out all the way because the biceps are just too tightly strung.  For the past couple decades, he basically spent 70% of his evenings hauling a giant steel grate up and down, next to a blistering, open-pit fire, whilst holding witty conversations.  I certainly couldn’t do that.  Even if I worked myself up to the physical (and social) conditioning necessary to do that, I still wouldn’t last in such a job for hardly any time at all.

So, I really wish I could change my dad’s opinion on how ‘important’ his work was.  I really wish I could convince him how proud (and intimidated, and inspired) I am that he was able to accomplish that.  He is my work role-model.  Always.

And I should say that:

1. My opinion of his work is not as important as his.  He gets to view it however he dang-well pleases.  It’s his work.  And,

2. I know he is proud of his good work.  It is possible, really probable, to have multiple feelings and opinions about something as big as a career – and I imagine those who don’t are either very lucky, or very unlucky.

But I still want him to know that I am proud of him.  And that his work has been important – to me.

Love for Father’s Day.

(Anna)