Tribute to my dad
August 8, 2013
"Different"
A young nurse approached me a few weeks ago looking for some advice. "Nicole, my son's pre-school teachers are worried about him. He is not as social as he needs to be, he keeps lining up objects, and he has a certain fascination with topics of his choosing. They want him tested for autism. Should I be concerned?" I asked her, "Is he happy?" She said, "Yes". I asked her, "Does he have friends?" "Yes," she said. "Is he functional?" "Yep", she said. "Then they need to relax," I told her. Let me tell you about my dad. My dad was often in a hurry, impatient and curt in his answers to us. I believe it was because he had a million ideas coursing through his brain and he had a hard time focusing. On the upswing, he had a million ideas coursing through his brain and we were the lucky recepients of his ideas! Like the zip-line, tree-house, trainset, race course and juke box. We were never bored or at a loss for things to do growing up!Other family members we did have to intervene because the above criteria were not met. With our research, my mom and I had discovered that my dad probably had Asperger's too. Then we had read a book about an adult who had discovered he had Asperger's later in life and found it liberating when he found out. My mom asked me to approach my dad and talk to him about his Asperger's. When I found him he was out working in the garden, another hobby. I started with, "Dad, did you know I have ADHD? " He said he was surprised and did not know that I had that. "Yes, and sometimes I have anxiety too." "Well, I always, knew you had that," he chuckled. "Dad, now that I know what I have, I know why I feel the way I do sometimes and I know how to deal with myself. it helps me, you know?" "Well, I'm glad, Coley, I am glad you feel better." "Dad, mom and I think you may have Asperger's, a form of autism. how do you feel about that?"
He stopped raking for a minute, leaned on the handle and stared off. Then he said something I will never forget and something I have thought about almost everyday since.
"Coley, do you think I do not know that I am different? I have known I am different from the time I was a very small boy. What you may not realize is that God can still use "different" and actually sometimes prefers "different".
After that moment I did read my scriptures. I found Moses with a speech impediment. Maybe so his mouth would be filled with what God needed him to say. I found Enoch with a social anxiety. He would freeze up in front of people. Maybe so he would have to rely on the Lord to help him. Jonah may have had a learning disability as it took the Lord many modalities to teach him. And lastly, there was a fourteen-year old illiterate boy who saw God and Jesus in a grove of trees and had to rely on God to bring the restored Gospel back to Earth.
When I had a garage sale to try to get rid of some of my dad's numerous hoards over the years, person after person showed up with story after story of how "Gene Goodwin" helped them during a difficult time. More than that, my dad LOVED to talk and I think these fellows liked to talk to my dad. My dad has always given pretty good advice and was a cheap source of anything from legal to marital advice for his friends and associates over the years. When he closed his auto parts business a few years back, he also closed his informal counseling practice. There was one time he even let a close friend live in a camper at the back of his store for a year or so when he was estranged from his family.
I AM proud of my dad. With his burning testimony of Jesus Christ, he was right...God does use different and sometimes even Prefers it!
Later in my dad's life, things got too busy and Dick's lungs got the better of him. My dad left his car restoration career and turned to us. He built zip-lines and play houses. He taught us how to garden and weed to care for the garden. He had us raise pigs in 4-H and we even had a baby lamb named "Timer" who baaaaed everytime he heard his bottle done in the microwave. I do not remember what happened to "Timer's" mother, only that he needed to be fed from a bottle with a strange black nipple that smelled like a tire.
My parents took us vacationing every summer in a bus turned into a motor-home. As one of Dick Martinez's last projects, he had emblazoned a dragon on the outside of the bus. We rode in the belly of the gross dragon on a 21 state tour with the Smith Family from Bend Oregon. Some of the highlights of that trip were driving through New York, New York and not being able to stop, the traffic was so bad. Mr. Smith was behind the wheel at that time and I remember he had his eyes fastened directly ahead while his white knuckles gripped the steering wheel. I think he preferred not to drive after that. The kids and I were in the back of the bus and we waved briefly at lady liberty and were fairly disappointed we did not get to meet her in person.
This past weekend my parents visited to see our 2nd daughter graduate. We took a trip up to Mount Charleston and were looking at the trees and I was reminded that my father's love of how things work extends beyond the world of mechanics. My parents asked me what kind of evergreens surrounded us.The red bark and sage-green needles were unusual. When we said we had better head down to the visitor's center to find out about the trees, we heard groans from the backseat.
"You taught me, young, dad," I said.
"Yes, we dragged you around to museums and art displays before you could protest,"he chuckled.
"Yeah, but when I spent that summer in Europe as a teenager, no one else wanted to go to the museums! Some missed the Louvre in paris because they were drunk. I was amazed that people just werent interested in these things. MAYBE I would have been like them if you had not dragged me around when I was young."
The last night my dad was here he wanted fish for dinner. He wandered out looking at restaurants by himself as everyone was tired from the Mt. Charleston escapade. After he became lost by himself,I decided to go with him to the Red Rock Casino buffet. He LOVED it. His love of beautiful things extends into the world of food. He marveled over the eggplant that had been prepared with ginger and teriyaki sauce. The burnt carrots with a hint of rosemary he took several servings of. We reminisced about the time we had gone to "Circus Circus" on a business trip to Las Vegas when I was twelve. It was only 3 dollars then!Everyone else had been too busy to go. It was on THAT trip that my dad told me he loved me for the first time. I think I had been a difficult child full of unpredictability and unusual moods. I had been an edsel-polisher for a reason. If I was not kept busy I was teasing or crying or in trouble. On that trip we made amends and decided we were more alike than different. We decided I liked seeing how things worked too and I just had to be kept busy to stay out of trouble. He revealed to me about his juvenile deliquency days and his troubled past.
I do NOT know how many more buffets my dad and I will get to sample. I do not know how many more "Big Heavys" we will get to scratch and sniff, but to my dad now and forever...your REAL genius was not in mechanical engineering, but in raising kids to think, love and SEE God in everything from trees to burnt carrots.
I love you Dad, just the way you are!
"Different"
A young nurse approached me a few weeks ago looking for some advice. "Nicole, my son's pre-school teachers are worried about him. He is not as social as he needs to be, he keeps lining up objects, and he has a certain fascination with topics of his choosing. They want him tested for autism. Should I be concerned?" I asked her, "Is he happy?" She said, "Yes". I asked her, "Does he have friends?" "Yes," she said. "Is he functional?" "Yep", she said. "Then they need to relax," I told her. Let me tell you about my dad. My dad was often in a hurry, impatient and curt in his answers to us. I believe it was because he had a million ideas coursing through his brain and he had a hard time focusing. On the upswing, he had a million ideas coursing through his brain and we were the lucky recepients of his ideas! Like the zip-line, tree-house, trainset, race course and juke box. We were never bored or at a loss for things to do growing up!Other family members we did have to intervene because the above criteria were not met. With our research, my mom and I had discovered that my dad probably had Asperger's too. Then we had read a book about an adult who had discovered he had Asperger's later in life and found it liberating when he found out. My mom asked me to approach my dad and talk to him about his Asperger's. When I found him he was out working in the garden, another hobby. I started with, "Dad, did you know I have ADHD? " He said he was surprised and did not know that I had that. "Yes, and sometimes I have anxiety too." "Well, I always, knew you had that," he chuckled. "Dad, now that I know what I have, I know why I feel the way I do sometimes and I know how to deal with myself. it helps me, you know?" "Well, I'm glad, Coley, I am glad you feel better." "Dad, mom and I think you may have Asperger's, a form of autism. how do you feel about that?"
He stopped raking for a minute, leaned on the handle and stared off. Then he said something I will never forget and something I have thought about almost everyday since.
"Coley, do you think I do not know that I am different? I have known I am different from the time I was a very small boy. What you may not realize is that God can still use "different" and actually sometimes prefers "different".
After that moment I did read my scriptures. I found Moses with a speech impediment. Maybe so his mouth would be filled with what God needed him to say. I found Enoch with a social anxiety. He would freeze up in front of people. Maybe so he would have to rely on the Lord to help him. Jonah may have had a learning disability as it took the Lord many modalities to teach him. And lastly, there was a fourteen-year old illiterate boy who saw God and Jesus in a grove of trees and had to rely on God to bring the restored Gospel back to Earth.
When I had a garage sale to try to get rid of some of my dad's numerous hoards over the years, person after person showed up with story after story of how "Gene Goodwin" helped them during a difficult time. More than that, my dad LOVED to talk and I think these fellows liked to talk to my dad. My dad has always given pretty good advice and was a cheap source of anything from legal to marital advice for his friends and associates over the years. When he closed his auto parts business a few years back, he also closed his informal counseling practice. There was one time he even let a close friend live in a camper at the back of his store for a year or so when he was estranged from his family.
I AM proud of my dad. With his burning testimony of Jesus Christ, he was right...God does use different and sometimes even Prefers it!
June 15, 2014
"The Big Heavy"
My dad was busy when we were growing up. He ran an auto-parts business and also had several hobbies , or ventures, that kept him occupied. On the rare occasion when he included the kids , he was always teaching. My father missed his inherent calling in life because he is one of the best teachers I have ever had. He loves facts ,has a brain for them and likes to know how things work or function. Of course this is a beautiful thing when you have a genius level mind for mechanics. In other subjects he struggled, but my dad was and is a savant when it comes to mechanical engineering. Pistons, heads, and sparkplugs. These were his mantras while the engine block was his canvas. He had a great friend named Dick Martinez who lived just down the road. Dick had converted his garage into a car painters paradise. My dad would fix the edsel or the Studebaker or the '57 chevy and Dick would put on his fumigation type mask and set to work. They came up with many a masterpiece and my dad would let me polish them. My favorite was a beautiful Cadillac valued at close to 50 grand in it's heyday. I will never forget the smell of it's red leather seats. For some reason I still think ALL leather should smell that good. It doesn't, however, and maybe it takes the sun shining through tinted car glass to manufacture such a fragrance. The Cadillac was one of the only cars he held onto from the restoration-type period of his life. It came to my mind a few months ago and I suddenly wanted to just go sit in it at my parents house out in the garage. I called my mom and she told me my dad had sold it. I told her that that was "a big deal" and was probably quite hard on him...kind of like selling a kid. She agreed it had been kind of tramatic seeing it leave the drive.
"The Big Heavy"
My dad was busy when we were growing up. He ran an auto-parts business and also had several hobbies , or ventures, that kept him occupied. On the rare occasion when he included the kids , he was always teaching. My father missed his inherent calling in life because he is one of the best teachers I have ever had. He loves facts ,has a brain for them and likes to know how things work or function. Of course this is a beautiful thing when you have a genius level mind for mechanics. In other subjects he struggled, but my dad was and is a savant when it comes to mechanical engineering. Pistons, heads, and sparkplugs. These were his mantras while the engine block was his canvas. He had a great friend named Dick Martinez who lived just down the road. Dick had converted his garage into a car painters paradise. My dad would fix the edsel or the Studebaker or the '57 chevy and Dick would put on his fumigation type mask and set to work. They came up with many a masterpiece and my dad would let me polish them. My favorite was a beautiful Cadillac valued at close to 50 grand in it's heyday. I will never forget the smell of it's red leather seats. For some reason I still think ALL leather should smell that good. It doesn't, however, and maybe it takes the sun shining through tinted car glass to manufacture such a fragrance. The Cadillac was one of the only cars he held onto from the restoration-type period of his life. It came to my mind a few months ago and I suddenly wanted to just go sit in it at my parents house out in the garage. I called my mom and she told me my dad had sold it. I told her that that was "a big deal" and was probably quite hard on him...kind of like selling a kid. She agreed it had been kind of tramatic seeing it leave the drive.
Later in my dad's life, things got too busy and Dick's lungs got the better of him. My dad left his car restoration career and turned to us. He built zip-lines and play houses. He taught us how to garden and weed to care for the garden. He had us raise pigs in 4-H and we even had a baby lamb named "Timer" who baaaaed everytime he heard his bottle done in the microwave. I do not remember what happened to "Timer's" mother, only that he needed to be fed from a bottle with a strange black nipple that smelled like a tire.
My parents took us vacationing every summer in a bus turned into a motor-home. As one of Dick Martinez's last projects, he had emblazoned a dragon on the outside of the bus. We rode in the belly of the gross dragon on a 21 state tour with the Smith Family from Bend Oregon. Some of the highlights of that trip were driving through New York, New York and not being able to stop, the traffic was so bad. Mr. Smith was behind the wheel at that time and I remember he had his eyes fastened directly ahead while his white knuckles gripped the steering wheel. I think he preferred not to drive after that. The kids and I were in the back of the bus and we waved briefly at lady liberty and were fairly disappointed we did not get to meet her in person.
This past weekend my parents visited to see our 2nd daughter graduate. We took a trip up to Mount Charleston and were looking at the trees and I was reminded that my father's love of how things work extends beyond the world of mechanics. My parents asked me what kind of evergreens surrounded us.The red bark and sage-green needles were unusual. When we said we had better head down to the visitor's center to find out about the trees, we heard groans from the backseat.
"You taught me, young, dad," I said.
"Yes, we dragged you around to museums and art displays before you could protest,"he chuckled.
"Yeah, but when I spent that summer in Europe as a teenager, no one else wanted to go to the museums! Some missed the Louvre in paris because they were drunk. I was amazed that people just werent interested in these things. MAYBE I would have been like them if you had not dragged me around when I was young."
When we got out at the visitor center half the group stayed in the car. Mom, dad, Jess and I started reading about the native trees. We discovered that the trees we had been looking at were called Ponderosa Pine and that they had 5 other names as well. Our favorite was "the big heavy". These beautiful trees also had the added feature of smelling like vanilla or butterscotch if you scratched and sniffed them! The occupants in the car were watching "The Lightning Thief" while we were out scratching and sniffing giant trees.
The last night my dad was here he wanted fish for dinner. He wandered out looking at restaurants by himself as everyone was tired from the Mt. Charleston escapade. After he became lost by himself,I decided to go with him to the Red Rock Casino buffet. He LOVED it. His love of beautiful things extends into the world of food. He marveled over the eggplant that had been prepared with ginger and teriyaki sauce. The burnt carrots with a hint of rosemary he took several servings of. We reminisced about the time we had gone to "Circus Circus" on a business trip to Las Vegas when I was twelve. It was only 3 dollars then!Everyone else had been too busy to go. It was on THAT trip that my dad told me he loved me for the first time. I think I had been a difficult child full of unpredictability and unusual moods. I had been an edsel-polisher for a reason. If I was not kept busy I was teasing or crying or in trouble. On that trip we made amends and decided we were more alike than different. We decided I liked seeing how things worked too and I just had to be kept busy to stay out of trouble. He revealed to me about his juvenile deliquency days and his troubled past.
I do NOT know how many more buffets my dad and I will get to sample. I do not know how many more "Big Heavys" we will get to scratch and sniff, but to my dad now and forever...your REAL genius was not in mechanical engineering, but in raising kids to think, love and SEE God in everything from trees to burnt carrots.
" Everything is beautiful in a person when he turns toward God, and everything is ugly when it is turned away from God"
FR. Pavel Florensky
Comments
Post a Comment