Its Father’s Day today, 2010, and it may be the last Father’s Day I can really share with my dad. He’s 85 years old and has Alzheimer’s.   He may not know who I am a year from now. He’s lost so much in the last six months since his diagnosis already.

He’s not an educated man but he’s smart. He is the child of Italian immigrants. He (and Mom) always provided for us despite his 2 six-pack a day drinking habit.   Thanks to Dad, we were the only kids we knew who could pour an entire can of beer into a chilled glass without forming a head on the beer (“Pour at a 45 degree angle” Dad taught us).  We weren’t rich or poor but we were probably both in different ways:  Rich in ethnicity, in family and in food.  Poor in the fancy cars, fancy house, or fancy anything, really.  It was a good childhood.

Dad has a dry sense of humor.  I remember the very first time I got a joke and knew Dad was funny:  I was about 4 years old and needed to go to the bathroom.  Dad had been in the bathroom a long time. I finally knocked on the door and said “Daddy, are you coming out?” He said “No, I’m going to live in here.”  I laughed. I got it….but, damn, I was doing the pee-pee dance and still had to go!  My sister, brother and I all have that same sense of humor much to the chagrin of our own kids.

We’d get such a kick out of how he would annoy our mom (God bless her soul!).   We laugh now recalling when Mom was on the phone with ‘important people’ (whoever that was – probably the phone or electric company) and she was trying to be all professional–like and Dad would get clothespins and clip them on her ears and her nose.  She would be speaking calmly on the phone and swatting Dad at the same time.  “Yes, the name is Mannino, M (swat)-A (swat)-N (swat)…..”  We would roll on the floor laughing. Dad would get such a devilish look on his face – we don’t see that look much anymore.

I’m sure it’s probably the same look he had on his face as a mischievous little boy.  He’d tell us the story about when he was a kid and he would annoy his grandfather.  His grandfather used a cane and wore a hat (all men wore hats in those days).  The grownups were sitting around the table (where you usually find all Italian families!). Dad took hisgrandfathers hat from where he put it down earlier. Dad crawled under the table and, with the hat on a stick, walked the hat at table height as if he had it on his own head.  His grandfather would try to hit the hat with his cane thinking he was bopping my dad on the head (this was in the old days, remember, times were very different than today).  Dad gets that silly grin on his face when he retells this story.  I picture this as something out of a Laurel and Hardy movie.

I went downstairs the other day to get Dad up for our weekly visit to the barber for a shave (he can’t shave himself anymore and this is a nice luxury for him).   He’s deaf in one ear and hard of hearing in the other.  He has a hearing aid but prefers to watch TV wearing a cordless headset.  I went into his bedroom and he was lying in bed watching an old black and white Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers movie with his headset on.  I danced into the room doing my best Astaire/Rogers impersonation to get his attention.  He looked at me with his headset on.  “You do that good” he said mustering up all the sarcasm he possibly could.  And, there it was, that silly little grin.

He made me a very happy girl. I love you, Dad. Happy Father’s Day.