Love languages. The way we feel loved and appreciated and show our love. Words of affirmation. Quality time. Receiving gifts. Acts of service. Physical touch.

My father is a man of very little words (unless you get him on a topic about history, politics, or heavy machinery – none of which I enjoy discussing at length). He has phrases he has used since as long as I can remember that cover most bases. Some borrowed, some all uniquely his. Many nautical. “No sea too rough no job too tough”. “You can find anything you ever need at a gas station”. “You have to pick your battles”. “Tide and time wait for no man”. “Get the line out” (refers to boats or even just when parking a car at a restaurant). “There’s no free lunch!”. “Lin, you’re going to drive me to drinking”. I’ll let you imagine the rest.

My father loves telling stories about him walking with tiny little me around our town. I would hold his thumb with all my fingers and babble a mile a minute while my little legs tried to keep up. At night, I would tell him one story after another until he dozed off before me.

Our adult conversations are not substantial. When we walk together on the beach with my kids running ahead, it’s usually a comfortable silence and our presence together is enough. For all my post-college years in Hoboken, I called him almost every morning on my walk from my apartment to the ferry. He would tease me that he was “already eating lunch” at my 9am departure. Those commuting calls stopped when we moved to the suburbs and a lot of our talk and shared love moved to grandchildren and his love of the 6 little boys who most definitely own his heart.

Then, one day, a few months ago, my father sent me a love letter in one of the languages I understand most and least expected from him. A single picture of a sunrise taken by him that morning. And now, almost every clear morning there is a sun rising in the sky, I get a morning picture and a glimpse of the start of my father’s day. A glimpse of how he thinks about me. How he loves me. It’s no small commitment on these long days of the year when the sun rises before 5:30am. My father is not a photographer. He doesn’t have any high-tech equipment (I’m pretty sure he’s still using a flip phone). He even asked if I ever share the pictures to say they are mine (which I will respectfully ignore). But in every medium he’s not comfortable, he found a way to speak to me.

It is amazing to be loved in all the unique languages you speak, and to love you in my special ways. Tide and time may wait for no man, but if they did, you’d be the man to make them.

Happy Father’s Day to a man who will never be on social media, but who can hopefully find this on the world wide web on his flip phone and know that I love him very much.

Linda

Love Languages. A little note to a big guy.