Rumors about My Dad

According to my brother, my father can play the guitar
According to his brother, my father was the best
billiards player in the county
According to his mother, my father was a certified genius

My father played baseball all throughout his youth,
He was a pitcher, a hitter, a third baseman
My father was a vegetarian before he knew the word for it,
He ate cold tins of baked beans while his mother made bacon and
sausage for the rest of her sons

My father is legendary
My father will deny everything

Here are some things that I know to be true:
He has a chocolate birthmark under his right elbow and
looked for a similar mark on each one of my sons

If he was supposed to pick me up after school, seventy-five
percent of the time he would drive home then remember and go back
to get me

He used to get up at four o’clock every morning to paint in the quiet hours

When my mom isn’t around, he’ll call her cute

He read Jane Austen with such devotion that I felt compelled to do the same

He loved his own father very much and once told me how my grandfather lifted a car so that my uncle wouldn’t be crushed under it with such admiration in his voice that even though I never knew my grandfather, I loved him for his strength and bravery

He also told me how my grandfather loved Christmas, something that my dad does as well, putting on Christmas albums long before December

And the most uncontested fact about my father,
sixty six years ago today, he made his way into our world
And it has been a better place because of it

Happy Birthday Dad.