Father's Day, and another big scare

Flashback to May 2000 --

Kim and I had just moved into our first house, with all of the caution and nervousness that goes with it. Within the first week or so, Kim noticed water in the basement. A call to Winthrop's major plumbing outfit resulted in the discovery of a broken pipe in the wall along the kitchens of the apartments. A major expense right that we weren't ready for off the bat -- although, truth be told, it would up being a blessing in disguise. The guy who took care of us, Bill Grayson, became our "plumber friend" and my personal hero for all of the small jobs he did for us at a moment's notice. (And his daughter Maura was a godsend to us as Ellie's first babysitter.)

Fast forward to 2007 --

The other day -- not 2 full weeks into the ownership of our new house -- we noticed a wet spot in the carpet of the family room that was getting bigger and wetter by the day. Once again, we were bracing ourselves for a big expense that we weren't ready to tackle, and visions of ripped out walls and jackhammers kept me up most of Wednesday night. Two visits by a local plumber later, it turned out the culprit was a condensation hose from our air conditioning unit that was supposed to be positioned over the drain, but was instead tucked away behind the furnace in our laundry room. We've got to replace the padding under that section of the carpet and dry the whole thing out, but that's nothing compared to the major pipe replacements I was envisioning. (It's yet to be determined if this episode is a blessing of any kind.)

In both cases, my immediate reaction was to call my dad.

When it comes to things like this, I guess I never really grew out of the childhood notion that he knows how to diagnose and fix just about anything around the house. As I got older, I realized that he just learned by doing and watching, like I did. But that has never kept me from going to my "go-to" guy.

And truth be told, he's been, and continues to be, my "go-to" guy for just about everything in my life. Advice on my first mortgage, unexpected tickets to a Sox or Bruins game, sharing oversight duties at the Stool, or just needing a guy to talk to about something going on in the family -- JD has always been my go-to guy.

So when we noticed that the carpet was getting wet, it stung a bit to know I couldn't call Somerville and have the voice on the other end say, "I'll come over tomorrow and take a look at it." The sting wasn't that he wouldn't be the one to figure it out -- I could care less who figured it out. The sting was that my "go-to" guy wasn't close by, ready to give me reassurance that his mere presence has given so many, many times over the years.

Perhaps it's appropriate that the carpet got wet when it did, four days before Father's Day. It gives me another blog entry, to be sure, but it also gives me a long overdue opportunity to let the world know how much I honestly love and miss my dad.