The Dad Entry

So this is a teensy bit late, but my father has just celebrated a Birthday, so I thought I’d use this blog to put up a little tribute to him in honor of that.

Happy Birthday dad!

A TRIBUTE TO GARY WILLIAM ALLEN

By Andrew Allen

As long as I live, I think I will remember my father’s voice before anything else about him. Not necessarily because there is anything unusual about it, as a dad’s voice goes—it can range from gruff displeasure to booming approval in a pretty ordinary fashion. And not because there’s anything wrong with or unremarkable about his appearance; his slim build stands a little shorter than me but nonetheless carries an easy authority. The reason that my mental portrait of “Gary William Allen” renders an audio sample before anything else is very simple: that voice was often the thing that raised me.
My parents have freely admitted to me that by the time I was born, they were feeling pretty good about the results of the first two Allens they had authored, so they relaxed for their last entry in the series. This manifested itself in several ways, but none was more idiosyncratic than the fact that my day-to-day discipline was almost always metered out by a disembodied voice. My seven year old self would be happily sneaking another episode of “The Simpsons” at eleven o’clock when the basement door would whoosh open dramatically and, after a brief pause, that voice would tumble down the stairs:

“Bedtime.”

That was the most common one, although in a close second was its angrier brother, “It’s past your bedtime.” Other visitors included, “Homework done?” (a rhetorical question, meant to inspire fear), “Turn that down,” “Recycle,” “Mow the yard,” and my personal all-time favorite, “What are you doing down there?” To be honest, I suppose that a more disobedient child could have gotten a lot done in such a hands-off atmosphere, but to me, something about that voice just had to be obeyed.
The voice was tenacious. Make no mistake, just because I physically planted myself in the same room with my father did not mean I wasn’t going to get the voice. Yes, he would answer me, but the range of emotion he would display was extremely basic, and his face would remain locked in another direction; the man was practically a ventriloquist. By the time I was a teenager, if I saw my father standing solemnly in the kitchen, one hand clasping the new “Car and Driver” while the other cradled a little plastic cup of orange juice, my mind classified this as “he’s asleep.” Knowing this, it’s easy to see why Britt’s policy on “Car and Driver” was to literally bash it with his nose until dad couldn’t hold it anymore.
But here’s the funny thing about the voice: it was always paying attention. No matter how absorbed my dad was in something, if I came home upset about anything, his eyes would snap to mine and he’d be asking me what was wrong before I even had a chance to put on a show of my emotions. Even if I deliberately placed myself on a different floor, he would appear within minutes and notice something was wrong. Once or twice, he even seemed to get home from work right when I needed him. That’s something that has always been so phenomenal about my father: he is never, ever absent when you need him. “Reliable” seems to be built into his DNA, he just doesn’t know how to drop the ball.
All three of his children discovered that dad was absorbing things we told him more than we thought he was. He constantly reminds us how proud he is of us, always pointing out our successes and shrugging off our disappointments, and reminding us how “neat” it is that we’re each so different. I know it seems like a stupid little thing, but when Caroline came to Greystone utterly converted to the television show “The Office,” dad also quickly developed a taste for it, so they could share that together. And if Brady needs to gush about a new car, or a boat he wants to buy, dad is the only Allen who steps up to the plate. The two of them will disappear for an entire day sometimes, venturing off to car dealerships for test drives, or locking themselves in the garage with a troublesome automobile.
As for me, I think I got the best of all the kids. A few years ago, I began writing music and recording it on my laptop, and as I got better at it, I felt the urge more and more to share it with someone. So, one stormy night, I tiptoed down the stairs to dad’s study, timidly grasping a CD-R. I felt stupid, honestly; who was going to care about my dumb little songs?
“Uh, Dad?”
“Yes?” replied the voice, as my real father hammered away on his blog.
“Do you wanna hear this song I just did?”
Dad swiveled his chair around, “You mean you recorded it?”
“Yeah.”
“Sure!”
He threw his CD player open and cranked the volume on his system. Within a minute, he was tapping his feet and humming along, shaking his hide and smiling. “Wow,” he kept repeating, “Is that you on guitar? Did you do all those harmonies? You wrote this yourself?” When it was over, he played it at least three more times, summoned my mother to hear it, and then emailed it to every relative and work colleague he could think of. Over the next few days, he kept forwarding me their enthusiastic replies, and almost any time I walked by the office, I heard myself booming through the speakers. The next night at dinner, while we were discussing something completely different, dad dropped his fork and said, “You know, Rew, that stuff you did could be commercial. I mean, that is great music.”
I don’t think I can explain to you in words how it feels to hear your father get lyrics you wrote stuck in his head, humming them absent-mindedly as he strolls through the kitchen. Once or twice, I had to sit down and wipe tears from my eyes, I felt so overwhelmed by it. My father doesn’t just support his kids, he absorbs the things they love and care about into himself, making them parts of his life, as well. It’s one thing to have someone compliment a song you wrote, but my father treats me like any other musician in his collection, eagerly awaiting my next release and contemplating the meaning behind my lyrics. I cannot think of another time in my life that I have felt better about being me.

When I was about fifteen, I asked my dad if parenting is difficult. He replied that even though it could be very taxing, it was also enormously simple. “I have three rules for being a father,” he said, “I just make sure my kids know that I love them, I love their mother, and I love the Lord. And that’s it, that’s all I do.” Even at that relatively young age, I knew the moment he said it that he wasn’t kidding. Nothing is more certain in my brain than those three simple facts: he loves me, he loves mom, he loves the Lord. Truthfully, before he pointed them out, I took them for granted.
But that’s the truth about my dad, it took me most of my life to appreciate what he was really up to. Even that “voice” of his was really just a way of giving me space and trusting me to be an adult, which is why I never felt the urge to disobey it. And the times when I ranted endlessly at him while he studied a newspaper, I’m not sure I ever even paused for a breath, much less an opportunity for him to chime in. As much as I joke about him dividing his attention, I always walked away from those little tirades feeling better. I think dad knew I just needed to be heard, not necessarily spoken back to.
One of the great joys of adulthood (and there may not be many) is that you can look back at your upbringing with a fresh pair of eyes. When I look at mine, I can’t believe how blind I was to the level of attention my father was always paying. No matter how many times I’d come home from a bad day and find him ready to commiserate before I even asked, or how many of my silly little artistic endeavors he embraced and bragged about to his friends, I continually underestimated him. He probably wanted it that way, kids are easier to keep an eye on if they think you’re sleeping on the job. I’ll always think of that voice first when I think about my dad, because that thing had me fooled for years.