Happy birthday Dad. How amazing it is to realize that it’s been 30 years since I’ve actually said those words to you. I have often said, perhaps as I reflect on it now, a bit uncharitably, that my father elevated difficulty to the level of an art form.

Born in Poland, faced with the horrors of being a Jew in the unfriendliest of environments and the unfriendliest of eras, he and his family were fortunate to escape to the United States, sparing them from the Holocaust which claimed their extended family and, in truth, even the town in which they lived.

As a 15 year old, he was able to complete his schooling and go to work. He worked hard, had success but never to the level he longed to achieve. Marrying at 49 (by all accounts because his mother pushed him out of his comfortable life of works and books), I suspect he was more than a bit surprised to become the father of two at the age of 52.

While he never found the success he craved, Dad channeled his dreams to his children. He expected good grades (“Why was this an A and not an A+”), he expected achievement, he wanted to be, and was, keenly engaged in what my brother and I did, especially academics.

He was painfully self conscious, always very aware of how he appeared. Cutting the lawn required a shirt and tie. Picking us up from school or Mom from work required a suit and tie. He had closets full of clothes, all his suits custom made and, as a child, I did think that his tailor, despite the fact that we called him Mr. Cabelka, was a member of our family! His standards for himself were also standards for us and our hair and clothes were always supposed to be perfect and we’d hear about it if they were not.

When he loved, he loved fully and without measure. His sister was dying of cancer, her husband had died unexpectedly the year before, and Dad devoted his entire life to caring for her in the last year of her life. He drove to her home across town four or five times each day, racing back to take Mom to work or make sure we got to school. After dinner, we would all head back and spend the evening. And when the cancer finally won the battle, he was devastated and depressed, a depression he never fully got over.

With my brother and me, his love was profound and often overwhelming. In my college years, when the only phone was in the hallway, it wasn’t unusual to return to my dorm after class or an evening out, to find that he’d called 25 times. When, in later years, my husband and kids would drive home to Wisconsin (a 15 hour trip), the phone was always ringing.

As he got older, and his health somewhat more complex, he would often call me with symptoms or concerns. I would try to talk him into calling an ambulance when it sounded severe and he would invariably hang up on me, although not before telling me that “if I were a good daughter, I would be there taking care of him.”

So many times I struggled with his phone calls three or four or more times a day, loving my father and frustrated at his demands I could not meet. So many times I wrestled with “not being a good daughter” despite my desire to be one and, at the same time, to live my own life with my own young family.

And yet, and yet, from the perspective of so many years, I see all the parts of me that have his fingerprints clearly on them. The love of learning, the passion for books, the desire to expand my horizons are all my Dad reflected in me. The expectations I put on myself are just as real as his were to him as is my constant desire to “do more” and “be more.” My worrying is also an echo and my family will tell you that being ten minutes late equates to me being convinced that something terrible has happened to them.

We always wish for one more conversation with those we have loved and lost. If I could have that chat with my Dad today, I would tell him that I am sorry for all the times I was impatient and all the times I didn’t understand. I would tell him that I value him and I would try to find ways to help him to find the joy that so often eluded him. I would tell him that I see him in me and that I hold him, always, in my full heat.