When I was in the eighth grade, I was nominated for membership in the National Junior Honor Society. I needed just one thing, a letter of recommendation, and it needed to be good. I joined you in our regular star-watching ritual on the front porch that night to ask advice. No problem, you said – you had it under control. After work the next afternoon, you sat at your standard-issue IBM typewriter and got to the point: “You should accept Mitzi for three reasons: 1) She’s smart. 2) She’s funny. 3) She’s my daughter.” To my surprise, it worked, and it helped shape my identity as a young woman who was competent and capable.

There is so much good – searching for satellites in the night sky and learning the constellations, making animal-shaped pancakes on the weekends, fishing at the lake, making everything paper from sailor hats to sail boats to kites that fly and, your favorite, airplanes. You opened a world of imagination to your girls. You modeled humor, good judgment and ease with people. You gave me the gift of writing, for which I will always be grateful. I have been practicing these last few years and hope to one day be published. I suppose this tribute to you means I finally made it as a writer; I’m published!

But seriously, if I could write a letter of recommendation for you, it would read, “Please accept him for the following reasons: 1) He’s smart. 2) He’s funny. 3) He’s my dad.”

Love,
Mit

December 10, 2008

~~~

There are moments that crystalize in our senses.  Some write the record of trauma on our hearts and in our neural pathways.  Others are so beautiful, like a double-hung rainbow perfectly placed amid a whispering sky, the stamped imprints remain upon our souls.  They are placed in our permanent records.  I have seen the sun lower her gaze on the Grand Canyon and will never forget the moment the voice of God whipped up from the canyon floor one mile into the sky, and beyond.  It was, in every sense, awesome.

The writing of this tribute to my dad the day of his death was no different.  In fact, it was easy – and fun.  The anticipated suit-clad gathering of old friends beckoned a black-and-white retrospective of times past.  Recounting early memories was an Easter egg hunt of innocent treasures, the Good Times, the memories before.

Since the wee hours of December 10, 2008, things have changed for everyone.  I mean, things always change, right?

I was struck today by how very much like my father I really am.

From my mother I was gifted from the product line off the ethereal – belief, hope and a deep knowing that transcends human knowledge.

My father’s gifts to me are more basic.  By that I mean they are core, of the earth.  Dad passed on to his middle kid the keen ability to spot bullshit from a distance.  Better yet, he taught me to call it what it is in simple terms, with decency and a wry smile, without apology.  He taught me what it is to engage, to like and be liked.  I will never be as charming or intelligent, but I am content with being called to other things.

The single most important gift I received from Dear Old Dad was the plain understanding that we are all just people.  I mean, sheesh.

G. E. Viola, career IBMer, was a master at the Real.  Many of the gas station attendants, restaurant workers and plain folks he befriended would never guess he was an Episcopal Deacon and erstwhile med-school wannabe with interest in zoology, practiced in chemistry.  Dad was smart, and he had no need to fly a MENSA flag.  He did not need to stand out.

We are different in ways.  His modesty was rooted in pain and a childhood belief that he was less than those raised outside his mill-village neighborhood.  Another gift to me was that I did not carry this pain.  I have the benefit of seeing all people as just that – the same old dolls in different dress-up clothes.  Underneath they are equals; as my nephew August recently proclaimed, we all have the same parts – girl parts or, like him, hippos.  Why pretend otherwise?

This week has been a keen and memorable week of refinement.  I am more my core self today than this time last week.  We humans are all in an ongoing process of finishing.  Sometimes this gift arrives as refinement by fire.  Like a blacksmith’s ore, we are burned hard and dipped in the cool waters of friendship and grace.  In the end there is not less of us; what remains is simply more pure, more intensely shaped.  I prefer the definition of ‘refined’ I found on the Internet tonight: freed from impurities, purified.  I am more purely Mit.

So that’s the story, Dad.  I saw some stuff and named it.  Just for you I received the reply with a nod and a smile, human decency, without apology.  And at the appropriate time I stopped listening and simply let it roll off.

Thanks a bunch, Dad. (I know – you’d do the same thing for a friend, right?)

Really, thank you for the gift of you.  No bull.

© Mitzi Viola, 12/10/11