This is a love note to my dad. I know everyone says “you taught me so much” on Father’s Day – and I’m sure all the children of wonderful fathers are speaking the truth. So I feel I have to elaborate.

You never held me to a different standard based on my gender. When you were working on your motorcycle it was just as likely to be me or Adrienne as it was to be Chuck tasked with getting the next tool out of the toolbox.

You taught me to appreciate the fantastic experience. Whether it was the Grand Canyon or a grand meal or a concert on a grand piano, everything has the potential to be fantastic.

You taught me not to settle down and to always be looking for the next adventure. I don’t mean you taught me to be unstable. You taught me the balance between stability and restlessness that makes my life so fulfilling.

You held me to a high analytical standard. If something didn’t work, it was important to figure out why. I am surprised how often I find myself muttering, “Just THINK, Erica”. From you I know that, if something displeased me and it was within my power to alter the situation then I, and only I, am responsible for my displeasure and it is also no one’s responsibility but my own to change it. By having high expectations of me, you gave me confidence.

You taught me to drive in ice and snow and that these were not excuses to keep me from my responsibility to drive district choral singers to their practice at the high school or to show up to work. Here in North Carolina, where one is expected to stay home when it snows, I’m often one of the few people to show up to work on snowy days. And, when a particularly bad hurricane blew through here, I drove to work the morning after but had to find an alternate route home after a bridge – which I had crossed in the morning – washed away with the flood waters.

By reading us “The Raven” by candle light during power failures you taught me to appreciate not only the dark, but also well-placed, gothic melancholia. And Poe.

You taught me how important it is to do something. And not just something – EVERYTHING! From the time you attached me to those yellow wooden skis and sent me down the sloped front yard of the house at Ridgemont. – how old was I, four? After the skis there was the buckled-on, double bladed ice skates. Then the snow mobile you fit all three of us kids on and rode us through the fields and around the woods of the farm. In the summer time we were all on the motorcycle. (How did all four of us fit on that motorcycle? We must have been one skinny family! And no helmets – there were never enough for all of us and we abandoned what we had when one of us got our teeth smashed by the helmet in front; but we were in good hands). And the swings: no rickety, boring swingset for us. Instead, we had the knotted-rope/tire/wooden-board-for-a-seat swing attached to the ancient oak that allowed us to soar in to the sky. And, while motorboats are nice, we had the intellectual and mechanical challenge of wind and centerboard, jib and rudder of the sailboat. We were always attending a sporting event or a play at the university and now I love live action on the stage and on the field.

Now you’ve moved from skis to snow board and I could no more keep up with you on the slopes than I could in my youth, but I hope I can introduce you to SCUBA diving one of these days.