Father's Day
There's not much I'm going to say today. If you're a father, get off the computer and hang out with your family, that's my feeling. And that's what I intend to do. This Sunday isn't a day of rest for me, unfortunately; there's a backlog of work to do and I had to do it, but in a few hours I call it a day. My daughter is cooking for me and we're either going to watch "The Princess Bride" or something else; I'm luxuriating in my options.
As many of you know, this is my first Father's Day without a phone call to make. I found myself thinking about the clinking ice today, the way I could hear his evening Scotch being poured and consumed over the phone line. It was such a clear image; it was my favorite part of day to talk to him.
I did call my mom, though, just for a few minutes, just to check in, and she told me something interesting. She was looking for something in Dad's workshop, and she came across boxes of books. He was an orthotist, a specialist in upper extremity orthotics, and forty-plus years in that profession left a residue of literature. Mom wonders now what to do with it all; she wants it to have a home, if it's not out of date.
And she found a booklet, a little bound manuscript from a workshop Dad gave in the '90s. He did this sometimes; as I said, he was something of an expert in his particular speciality. He was an intuitive engineer in this; I watched him as a boy, in his shop, working with metal and plastic, leather and Velcro. His fingers moved quickly and surely, and his patients liked him, liked his humor and his skill.
The people who organized this workshop wanted to call it something, I guess, so they did, and that was the title on the booklet Mom found today, of all days, in a box in his workshop.
It was filled with diagrams, I gather, and instructions and schematics and ideas, nothing I would have much of a clue about or even an interest in, being a much different man than my father, and it was called:
The World According To Chuck
And, to quote Forrest Gump, I think that's all I have to say about that.
2:46:13 PM 
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