Once, in my infinite pubescent wisdom, I told my dad I was considering shaving my head and dying the stubble blue.  My father responded nonchalantly, “Fine.  But don’t be late for dinner or Mom will kill us both.”

That moment defines my relationship with dad over the last 40 years.  He’s the calm, cool and wholly laid back one.  Friendly and polite to a fault.  Nothing ever riles him up or annoys him from what I can tell.   I swore I was the mailman’s kid.  I was a whirling dervish from birth.  Dad enjoyed down time.

He is forever putzing around.  Some people call it puttering or doddling.  Dad mastered the art early on.  He could spend an entire day making his yard look perfect … going so far as to pluck rogue weeds with tweezers.  He would hand wash and hand wax his 28-foot motor home weekly.  Of course, the second he was done, it would start raining.  Dad would shrug his shoulders and grab a beer.

Lesser men would curse the sky.

I rarely asked my dad for advice, but he was always quick to dole it out.  I listened, but only because he was always right.  It drove me insane.  Still does.  I think the best thing about dad was his infinite patience.  Even though he could not have possibly cared less about my comic book obsession or proclivity for blonde highlights, I never knew otherwise.  He was quick with a pat on the back or a hearty “Good job!” or “I’m proud of you, Michael!”

Hands-down, the best gift I ever received came from my dad.  He wrote a letter to me seconds after I was born and gave it to me on my 21^st BDay.  It was written with such care and such love, that I immediately started choking up.  I was officially a complete wreck by the third paragraph.  By the end I was half-laughing, half-crying because the letter was an instant classic.  My dad had managed to be poignant while incorporating a lot of lame, cornball jokes into the letter.  Combine that with his notorious punctuation errors and it was a thing of beauty.  And even though I turned out to be a writer, I will never be able to duplicate its genuine nature.

Dad never missed one of my soccer games.  He practically chronicled my entire life on 8MM film and later on videotape.  He didn’t punish me when I got a D- in Geometry.  He let me sleep until noon from ages 13-19 with no comments from the peanut gallery.  And he’d grill my steaks in to a charred lump because I always liked my beef well done.  “You might as well be eating a belt,” he’d grumble, but he’d still grill it into oblivion to make me happy.

My dad is at his happiest when the world around him is content.  If there’s bliss in the world, my dad is at the zenith of his nadir.  He’s the ultimate peacemaker.  A peacemaker who can draw most anything free hand.  A peacemaker who enjoys a good game of golf and pineapple upside down cake.  And a peacemaker who makes the most out of retirement every single day.  “Sometimes I take TWO naps!”, he’ll say.

Yes, that’s my dad.  The calm, cool and collected one in the family.