Drinking With Dad

The only time I drank with my father was very unpleasant, but I can't forget it.

My father died when I was 16 years old. Cancer.

And yet, the things he and I did together in those short years remain present with me today, decades later.

I can see across the driveway in the early evening after he got home from work, tossing a baseball with me. I can see that large hand of his gripping a baseball, showing me precisely how to throw a curveball.

I can see him next to me, on his knees wth me alongside him, showing me how to plant seedlings in our backyard garden.

I can see him pointing to a large AAA map laid out on our dining room table, planning with me a road trip we would take that summer.

I can see him on the construction site with workers and subcontractors, introducing me to the men who worked for him with a prideful look on his face.

And I can see him on the diving board explaining in detail how he is going to do a cannonball that will produce a splash far greater than anything I can muster.

Despite his passing so young, he was 60 and I was 16, I did get a chance to drink with my father. It wasn’t wine, however. George was not a wine drinker. He drank beer and brown spirits, but the one time he did drink with me, it was Vodka. I was 14. Here’s the story:

I had always been a fairly social kid, had lots of friends even in the sparsely populated countryside of Novato, California, where I grew up. We lived in a part of Novato where no home sat on less than an acre of land, with most being much larger. Bikes were important to kids there. I had to peddle my way for a good while to get to my good friends’ homes.

Still, in the summers, we often had a crew of up to five of us maurading about the neighborhoods, not making too much trouble. One day, trouble found us.

My mother did not work, but she left the house frequently to do errands, attend clubs, and other stay-at-home-mom things. On one occasion, very late in the summer, when I was fourteen, she had left and let me know she’d be back after lunch. After she left, my crew arrived. David was on foot, Erik on his bike, and Brad sat behind Erik on the bike’s banana seat.

We were going to swim. But then, I don’t know who, someone suggested we have a drink. None of us had really experimented with alcohol. My dad had let me have a sip of beer now and then, but we weren’t drinking behind our parents’ back until that day.

We proceeded to raid my father’s liquor cabinet. It was an impressive cabinet, too. Lots of whiskey, bourbon, cordials, and relatively full bottles of gin, vodka, and rum. We chose Vodka. It looked the most beneign and we discovered it went down pretty easily with the orange juice my mother kept in the refrigerator.