Inspired Freelancer: To Dad on Father's Day

Father's day has been over for a few hours now, but I find myself thinking about my father as I edit the final draft of my Master's Thesis. My father was a software engineer who loved technology, and I know he'd be interested in my study, which looks at computer mediated communication, specifically, information seeking behaviors on Facebook. It was my father who taught me to love science. I remember watching video from the Hubble telescope and I remember dad bringing home freeze-dried ice cream from his trips to the NASA space centers. To me, his job was glamorous, working on space ships. And he did, he programmed the software for the life systems on the space shuttles. Tucked away at mom's house are photographs of him with famous astronauts. He even had his picture featured in a book published by NASA.

I remember being little and getting into all sorts of scientific trouble with dad. We raised sea monkeys, used a rock tumbler, made a human hair hygrometer and went by the lake to watch for waterspouts. I remember trying to assemble models of human cells with plastic bowls and clay, and I remember how excited he was to build us our first computer. My dad's home office was full of curiosities like an old reel to reel tape machine, little bendy circuit boards and electronic tools.

When the school let us shadow someone, I wanted to shadow my dad. I went with him to a day at work and then I went with him to teach night school at Cleveland State University, in their department of continuing education. His students were surprised that a tween was so adamant about following along with the C++ lesson they were learning. Another year I had a math project, and dad and I wrote a program where you plugged in the endpoints of two lines and the program calculated the intersection. I was so proud of that little program.

To get into my memories of my father is somewhat painful I must admit. Life is so very long, even when you are 29 years old. The things that happened when you were 8 or 12 or even 16 become so foggy and fuzzy. They are like still photos or a few strips of film that you can barely run through the old rusted projector. It's heartbreaking sometimes, not being able to enjoy a vivid, visceral memory. The one memory that is always vivid, maybe because mom has it on video tape somewhere, is the way it sounded when Dad talked to me when I was a baby. "Julie Ann," I can hear him saying. Maybe on some Christmas morning, or during some other family get together. It's the memories that you play over and over that you remember, but you know there were so many days in between that are gone for good without someone else to remind you.

Anyway, I don't want to write too much else right now about our relationship. I do have to get back to editing my massive thesis document. But, the thing that inspired me to pop on and write, that I do want to write about. As I was working, and thinking about my dad, I did what I often do when I'm thinking of someone, I google them. Strange? Maybe. But, somehow a person's google results are proof that they were here. I've googled great grandma Marian a number of times since she passed away last month and seeing the story I wrote about her on her 100th birthday and her mixed media piece at the Lakeland art show, somehow I find some comfort in that.

I've google'd my father before. One time I even found a patent with his name on it, but that was nowhere to be found tonight, maybe it's expired by now. In fact, only two things came up. One was my great grandmother's obituary, which listed his name as someone who had preceded her in death. The second is a note I wrote on a donation website in 2009, when I made a donation in dad's name. A friend of a friend was looking for books for the kids in his classroom in an inner city school in NYC. He wanted to start a library. When my friend posted about it, it made me think of dad and how important education and reading were to him. Anyway, it broke my heart tonight that he only appeared in three Google results. Dad was a remarkable person, and I feel like there should be more of a record.

Though I miss my father frequently for many important reasons, I often begin missing him because of technology. I'll be sitting around marveling at something new, or messing with some piece of technology; my iPhone, my computer, my e-mail, Google, Facebook, my blog, my amazing photo editing program, etc., and I'll realize at some point that Dad never got to see any of these things. He passed away at age 43 in 1998. In 1998, there was no Facebook - was there even Google? Not really. Google incorporated in September of 1998; my father passed away on August 23rd. I can't even imagine how fascinated my father would have been, or how he would have become involved with the wonderful technology we have today.

And, it makes me sad that he's not indexed in Google for all of his accomplishments as a programmer and as a person. So, I'm going to put his full name here, and someone can read about our sea monkeys, the games we played on the Vectrex and his love of Peter Gabriel that I didn't understand until he had been gone a few years. My father's name was James David Powell III. I wish he could see all of the amazing things that have happened since he has been gone, and I wish I could search him on Google and find pieces of his life, which are pieces of mine as well. Mostly, I wish I could know him as an adult. I wish we could talk, adult to adult, and I wish I could know him better. I wish he was here to meet my husband and to be a part of my family. I wonder how life would be different if he was here. Suffice it to say, losing him has been the biggest heartbreak of my life, and the biggest lesson in the fleeting nature of existence. I try not to take anything for granted, and I hope that one day I get to see him again.

Happy Father's Day Dad.