My father has this aura of persistence, one surely passed down to him from Grandpa Francis, World War II veteran and cryptographic specialist who helped us defeat the Axis in ways he took to his grave. It is the persistence of battle, the press for the next victory. Dad's always fighting something.
Inept supervisors. Broken promises. Glitches with his PC. High cholesterol. High blood pressure. Stress. Crummy cable TV service. Greying hair. This is after thirty years in management at four different corporations and one business handed down through family ties. His tour of duty in Vietnam is a distant skirmish now.
We'll not even talk about the past three years, a series of heartwrenching difficulties and shattered expectations, except to say they are over and the Kingdom of Francis stands intact.
The Queen may fret, but His Majesty refuses to surrender -- even in the darkest hours.
I got a call from Dad on the morning of September 11, 2001, when an surreal, gigantic tragedy dominated America's thoughts. We talked about the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and what we were doing at the TV station. But he was on the road, not glued to the TV. And he had other things on his mind.
"I think we're going to do that deal with McKesson," he said. Life goes on. Business goes on. The fight is not over.
Some of his management genes passed into my brother and I. Michael's overseeing theatre production at UCSD. I'm overseeing a TV news broadcast. We both became bosses to varying degrees and got tangled in our own top-down tussles.
"I want to say I'm proud of both my boys," Dad said more than once at the dinner table, although I forget the occasions. But the message still resonates after all these years, surviving the angst of teenage rebellion and the bickering that goes with it. So many of those arguments were just plain silly, like the one over finding reel caps for a old tape deck. That one had me wanting to end my Christmas break early and head back to the University of Missouri. We made up and I stayed.
We talk on the phone every weekend. Many times I'm his tech support representative, having put together his customized PC with parts we picked out at a computer fair. Dell would connect him to India. Every visit home now involves some degree of debugging. While some fathers and sons bond over sports or fishing or camping, we bonded over personal computers, going way back to a Radio Shack TRS-80, and then a malfunctioning Sanyo, a behemoth Sanyo, a Timex-Sinclair 1000, two flavors of Mac, various IBM clones and an Apple //c. The Queen has often rolled her eyes at such geek indulgences.
The Queen also watches The King's weight, even if he doesn't. We're all watching it for him.
"I don't eat that many sweets," he once said.
Mom and I burst out laughing. "Who's the one who always says, 'What's for dessert?'" Mother jibed.
Size matters. Exercise matters, but I don't worry about that. I swear he's the only person on our street who's mowing his own lawn instead of following the Southern California trend of hiring the nearest convenient minority. The Royal Grounds have never looked better. The battles continue, but the castle stands strong.
Long live The King... my father. And later, let's go to Fry's.
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