Galvin crop

Dad won’t leave me alone. I suppose it’s appropriate, given that it’s Father’s Day weekend. But, while he’s never really out of sight, out of mind, lately he just seems to be everywhere all at once.

Between you and me, it’s more than a little annoying.

He’s popped up in this space the past couple of weeks, without invitation. I’m just sitting here, translating a week’s worth of scribbles — none of which, mind you, have to do with him — and suddenly he’s moving my fingers across the keys as though the computer has become a Ouija board that only he controls.

Dad shows up in my bathroom mirror … although, to be honest, he’s always done that. The other day, I caught a glimpse of us as a Q-tip perched unattended in my ear and immediately had a hankering for a plate of my mother’s spaghetti.

There’s a story there.

There’s always a story. This week, we employed a turkey baster to empty a pool of water that refused to drain from the bottom of the dishwasher, and suddenly I’m back in Dad’s garage — as he’s using a mallet and a fireplace poker to change the oil in the car.

You had to be there for it to make sense. And, still, even then …

My mother used to say (as mothers are wont to do) that I was my father’s son which seemed obvious on a literal level, but has only revealed deeper meanings at this stage of life.

Along the way, dad and I both battled the bottle, soft teeth and bad backs. We each met our one-and-onlys while shuffling our two left feet across the floor — him during a USO dollar-dance as he successfully defended Cape Cod from the North Koreans; me in the middle of a contra line when I failed to protect the hat I was wearing from her stealing it.

He was the one who broke the news of my engagement. Sitting on the couch, with a Q-tip in his ear and a plate of spaghetti on his paunch, Dad looked over at us and asked “So, when are you two getting married?”

Seriously, what would you say, what could you say, when faced with such a tableau?

(I told you there was a story.)

Dad had a way with words, and seemingly no filter to prevent them from spilling out. He was not one for Dad Jokes; his humor came from out of the blue, often in that shade as well, and sometimes inexplicable.

“Shut your mouth and eat,” he’d warn when he’d had enough of the dinner table conversation — an order that my younger brother and I would try to work out using applied physics, just as we sought to determine just how (not to mention why) one would take a flying leap at a rolling donut.

His life was difficult and demon-filled, to the point where his sons learned the hard way to dare not walk a similar path. Yet, the influence was unavoidable.

Dining with my brother’s family one Thanksgiving, his youngest daughter caught us sharing an inside joke and said, “Oh gawd, there’s two of them.” Whereupon we looked at each other and simultaneously said “Three” … then broke into a maniacal laugh we’d gained through osmosis.

There’s always a story.

So, yeah, it’s annoying that Dad — who’s been down for the long nap on the Big Couch in the Sky for more than 20 years now — keeps showing up whenever he wants. As the saying goes, how can I miss him when he won’t go away?

It seems like yesterday, but it feels like forever.