Father’s Day 2020

Among the skills my Dad learned as a typesetter was to read upside down. Printing, as he learned it in the 1950s, was a tedious process that involved setting hot metal type into a wooden tray backwards and upside down, so a page could be printed forward and be read right-side up.

Backward, forward, upside down, right-side up. Pretty much explains this year 2020, and we’re not yet halfway through.

This is Father’s Day weekend, a bittersweet one as the loss of my Dad is still quite new. He died June 5 in his south Florida retirement community of pancreatic cancer after being on hospice care for seven weeks, all of which my three brothers and I were blessed to spend with him at different times and intervals.

Because nothing is normal when you are battling terminal cancer in the midst of a global pandemic, none of the past three months have been either. But you learn a lot through something like this. You learn that courage is sometimes as simple as getting out of bed everyday. You learn heroes come in all shapes and sizes and show up when you need them most. You learn that sometimes, life will come at you backwards, forwards and upside down, and there’s nothing you can do except trust that, at some point, everything will be made forward and right-side up. Thanks to our Dad, we had a head start on knowing that.

Here is a column I wrote on Father’s Day 2016, not about typesetting but about synchronized swimming. As is typical of almost almost anyone’s “Dad Stories,” this man had a lot of layers. I hope you’ll keep reading, as it’s a good story, too. And if you’re lucky enough to have your dad still with you, give him a hug or a phone call and tell him you love him because you just never know when life will throw you upside down.