Today is Father's Day.

Over the years, my relationship to my father has changed. When I was a little kid, I was very much a daddy's girl - I used to wait for him to come home from work (late some days; as a junior professor he typically got stuck with the evening classes). He could make me laugh - his sense of humor and mine have always been very similar. He could also pick me up and carry me or "bird" me - tell me to flap my arms like a bird and he would hold me so I could "fly." He would also take the whole family hiking. I don't remember him playing catch (the quintessential American suburban father thing) but that may have been as much a fact that I wasn't inclined to that kind of sports - I prefered more solo, non-competitive activities like hiking and climbing trees.

He also found the best presents - I remember as a kid getting some amazing toys at Christmas or on my birthday. (He's still generous - he's frugal in many ways but not stingy. He will take me - or my mom - or my brother - or my sister-in-law out shopping, and will buy clothes for us. Or housewares. Or books. Or in my case or my mom's case, fabric.)

We are actually pretty similar personality-wise, so when I got older - and some of those personality traits began to come out - we had some conflict. Ways in which I tend to be like him: highly self-critical, somewhat perfectionistic, tendency to "awfulize" or see the consequences of everything, somewhat of a workaholic. My father had learned to moderate those traits into more of being a good leader, but I hadn't, when I was a young teenager. So we had some conflict.

And yet, at the same time, even when I was mad at him and he was disappointed in me, I knew he still loved me. And there were a lot of good times. My relationship with my father was a little different than that with my mother. We had different things in common.

One of the biggest - and best - memories I have of spending time with my father when I was a young teenager was that he enlisted me to help on some of his research. I learned to read both topographic maps and soils maps while I was helping him. I also remember feeling proud when we'd go somewhere where a water sample needed to be collected for analysis and he referred to me as "my assistant." Part of it, I think, was a way to spend time with me. But part of it also was that I was smaller and more agile than he was in those days, and some of the old pumps or the outdoor spigots where we needed to collect well water were behind bushes or required shimmying between outbuildings. And so, he'd send me off, with a lighter to "flame" the spigot (to kill any bacteria that might be on its surface) and a cubitainer (the collection vessel) and I'd get the water sample. We drove around a lot of rural Ohio doing that sort of thing in the summer when I was in junior high. We also stopped and ate at a lot of little small-town restaurants, or at least got pie.

Later, he employed me in his geochemistry lab in the summers - he was part of a summer enrichment program for high schoolers. (I took it the first year it was in existence and then became the laboratory assistant). Again, he delegated a fair amount of responsibility to me - I made sure the glassware was properly washed (one wash with tap water and glassware soap, a rinse with tap water, and three rinses with deionized water). I also helped run the atomic absorption spectrophotometer and the Dionex unit.

I realize it now - but didn't really think about it then - he must have had a lot of trust in me. He's better at delegating and then not hovering than I am.

I also realize that just as I learned many useful things from my mom, I learned different, but no less useful, things from him. I think a big part of my comfort in working with and fondness of maps comes from the fact that early on, he had me finding particular features on topo maps or particular soil associations on soils maps.

He was pretty much always teaching. Family vacations tended to be to National Parks or other sites of interest. (Part of that was for him to get further teaching material - he taught a course on National Parks for many years - but also, I suspect, that like me, he hated the idea of a "vacation" that consisted of lying on a beach doing nothing.). I learned that if you kept your eyes and ears open, you could learn a lot. And more importantly, I came to love learning, something that has served me well my entire life.

My father - although he would probably reject the term because of how politicized it has become - is also somewhat of a feminist. He was the person in his department who had a large number of female graduate students. I realized - partly because of an offhand comment my mother made - that this was because he treated them as intellectual equals and didn't patronize them. (Someone asked my mother why he had so many women graduate students and she made some kind of a comment like "because he treats them like he treats the guys.") Women liked working with my father, I think, because of this - and also because he was what I refer to as "very married" - meaning there would be no question of intergender weirdness creeping into the work-relationship, because my father was devoted to my mom.

I remember him also treating me as an "intellectual equal" - both in the research I helped with, and the lab stuff, and also in his talks with me when I was deciding on a major in college.

He once told me - I remember we were driving home from my college, I think it was the first Thanksgiving I had been away - that if I wanted to be an engineer, I could, I was smart enough. (The truth is? At that time I had no interest in it. Now, looking back, maybe materials engineering would have been kind of interesting). He also once told me that if someone said I couldn't do something (he specifically meant an academic subject) because I was female, it was my duty to prove them wrong.

I think that kind of attitude helped me with the "*sshole professor" I wrote about last week - I got mad enough at the guy's patronizing ways that I used that anger to push me to do better than I might have otherwise.

And in all that - when I managed to pull my grade from a D to an A in physics, when I graduated with "diploma honors" from undergraduate, when I finished my Master's and my Ph.D., I knew my father was proud of me but also that he had known all along I could do it.

I think - from having observed students and hearing them talk about their families - it's a whole lot easier to be successful in college (and especially graduate school) if you have someone who is "behind" you - someone who believes you can do it even when you don't. For some students, that's spouses. For me, it was my dad. Oh, don't get me wrong - my mom did, too. But somehow, knowing my dad believed I could do it, it meant more. I think it was because my dad HAD graduate students of his own - he had seen people succeed and seen people fail and he knew what criteria were necessary for success. So I felt like, when he told me I could do it, that he was comparing my ability against the abilities of his students, and that he had some objective understanding that I could. That it wasn't just because he loved me, it was that he knew I could do it.

It was important to me to succeed, then, not just for me.

One of the somewhat-recent important memories I have came at my Ph.D. graduation. My father had handed me my diploma cover at my Master's graduation. (Yes, I went to it. I worked hard enough for that Master's that I wanted to). But at my Ph.D. graduation, I had told him that I wanted my advisor to "hood" me, mainly because one day my advisor had remarked that he feared I was going to be the last successful Ph.D. student he had. My father was fine with that. But when the day came - my father was on the platform as a department chair - he ran out with a huge bouquet of red and white flowers (the school colors) and handed it to me as I crossed the podium. So all the pictures of me from that day show me trying to juggle my diploma and the flowers while keeping the mortarboard from falling off my head.

It was always so important to me to know that he was behind me, that he not only supported what I was doing but that he knew I could do it.

Now, I talk to him at least once a week. I miss him. Once in a while I will get a call out of the blue from him - he's consulted me with statistical questions and with grammar questions and with questions about how to use certain features in Word or Powerpoint. And I always kind of took that for granted - that I was convenient to call. But I also guess he has to have some kind of respect for my knowledge, that he would call me rather than calling an 'expert' on campus.

One way in which we are different - and in which I wish I were more like him - is that he's someone who doesn't seem to need a lot of external validation. He's good at knowing what he's doing is good or right without receiving praise. Recently, the church he belongs to honored him for the years of service he's given in various capacities. He remarked (after we got home) that he didn't feel it was necessary for them to do it - that he was only doing what everyone should do. (But, then again, I think the point is: everyone SHOULD be doing that kind of stuff, but most people don't. Most people are "too busy" - busier than my father? That seems strange. - or they have some other kind of excuse).

He's also said on numerous occasions that it's better to be right (in the moral sense) than it is to be popular. That's true, but it's hard not to crave popularity.

And that sometimes it's necessary to stand up for things you know are right, even when no one agrees with you.

I think a lot of the strength of character I have - especially in terms of dealing with the work-world - come from having seen him as a model.

And he and I still laugh at the same kind of things. (He's a huge "Simpsons" fan as well.)

So, happy Father's day to my dad - and to all the other good dads out there.