In the raging daily heat of a family health crisis, it is lazily possible to absentmindedly overlook gifts that have been showered upon you.
After our psychologically bumpy outing to Boston last week, my oldest son presented us with the best Father’s Day of his 33 years.
His typically calming presence in our living room yesterday afternoon defined the truest meaning of Father’s Day.
At the base of his character and personality, Matt, happily, is the opposite model of his father.
Shy. Modest. Easygoing. Seldom-spoken, and then only softly.
When he visits, he climbs the stairway from the garage, almost bashfully peers around the corner, and barely audibly he says “Hi” to whomever is in the living room.
Whether there is a crowd or just Diane and me, he is the same unobtrusive presence. Immediately and comfortably, he engages.
After a few minutes, he will step over to the dining room piano. Again unobtrusively, he will begin freelancing The Most Beautiful Music This Side of Heaven since Guy Lombardo died. The masterfully knitted soft chords are liltingly weaved into his own compositions.
A drummer and guitarist by training and desire, Matt, to my amazement, does not read music. He just imagines almost unattainable cerebral beauty without ever repeating a sequence or an informally weaved composition.
Matt’s langorous creations remind me of the piano virtues of the society orchestras of another era, Eddy Duchin and Lester Lanin.
Since he grew up in a household buffeted daily with psychological trauma, Matt’s admirable professional and personal success and stability are glowing tributes to his unassuming but impressive muscularity of character.
In Closing
Anyone can be a father.
It requires extraordinary internal talent – which Matt has cultivated – to be a son, whose beaming Dad proudly, publicly proclaims, “That’s my boy.”
