Memory Lane: My Tato

On the eve of the third anniversary of losing my dad, my Tato, I've decided to take a little trip down memory lane. I'm not going to talk about ALS, or anything related to the last two years of his life. I'm going to focus on the good, the happy, the hilarious. There's a lot more of that than the bad stuff.

My first memories of my Tato are in Florida, which is where we lived until I was four years old. I remember riding on his shoulders a lot, perched six feet three inches off the ground on his broad, tan shoulders. He had pitch black hair and a dark bushy beard to match. When I was very little he was still in school, studying for his Ph.D. in Oceanography at Florida State University. I have vague memories of sitting on his lap in his little study in our three bedroom house, patiently hanging out while he studied diligently, always with a slide rule in his hand. I remember playing with that slide rule, sliding the pieces back and forth while he memorized equations and countless other facts I can only dream about.

When I was little I didn't call my father Tato. I didn't call him Dad or Daddy either. I called him Richard. I guess that's what I heard my mom calling him so I called him that too. I distinctly remember calling out "Riiiiiichaaaaard!" in my little girl voice, completely oblivious to the fact that most children do not call their fathers by their first names. My grandmother was horrified. Apparently she followed me around repeatedly saying "No, say Daddy! Daddy!" But I ignored her and called him Richard until I was about five years old. Then I finally started calling him Tato (Ukrainian for dad). And that was it.



Me and my parents shortly before moving to Washington DC in 1974

When we moved to the DC area we lived in an apartment for a year. I remember my Tato baking dark Lithuanian bread in the oven. He would take long, hot showers and sing loudly. He drove a white VW bug that seemed too small to hold his large body. He went to work every day to a building that was only about five minutes away. Sometimes my mom would take me to visit him. He had a secretary named Olivia, an exotic looking black lady with a large afro, fancy earrings and a big smile. What I didn't know was that he had taken a job with the Department of Commerce, working for NOAA, where he would continue working up until the year he died.

When I was five we moved to a house in Camp Springs, Maryland and Tato went to work in the "World Weather Building". To me that sounded very exciting. I remember him taking me to his office, flashing his badge to the security guard and feeling very important that I was with him. He let me play on the computer, which in the 1970s was a huge noisy machine that spit out cards with holes punched in them. He would let me type on a keyboard and the cards would pop out with what I typed across the top.

By now my sister had been born and she got to ride around on his broad, tan shoulders too. Tato always seemed big and strong to me. He was always working on something: building closets, putting up shelves, cultivating his vegetable garden in our backyard, fixing the car. He never sat in front of the tv when he got home; instead he would change out of his work clothes and go to work on whatever project he happened to be working on at the moment.

My sister on top of the infamous shoulders of Tato, with me and our dog Toto in North Carolina 1977

Despite his affinity for household projects my Tato was never short on affection for his ladies. I remember he would always sneak up behind my mom when she was cooking dinner, grabbing her and kissing her, sometimes grabbing her a little too hard at which point she would shriek "RICHARD!" We heard that shriek a lot growing up. It was one of the sounds of our childhood, in a good way. He would always grab me and my sister and plant big, wet "chumkies" on our cheeks. He would squeeze us and say "My girls!" He was very affectionate.

I remember sitting on his lap, listening to stories or songs in Lithuanian. He kept a little notebook in which he would write Lithuanian words and phrases and draw funny pictures to go along with them. He played the guitar and made up a song about Waikiki that he would sing to us at bedtime.

Having grown up in a house full of women and then being surrounded by females again in his adult life, my Tato was naturally a ladies man. He was a big flirt. I remember going places with him, like the supermarket or the library, where he would completely embarrass us by singing to the librarian or the checkout clerk. When my parents threw parties he was the first one dancing, grabbing my mother or any of the other ladies in attendance and twirling them around the room. He was the life of the party without really trying. It was in his nature.

My Dad surrounded by ladies at a toga party, circa 1980

He did a lot of unusual, off the wall things. He clipped his finger nails while driving his VW Bug while simultaneously  steering with his long legs. He put on a curly wig and played a record of breaking glass every time the doorbell would ring on Halloween. He mowed strange designs into the lawn. He hung all of our stuffed animals from the basement ceiling with string when we were teenagers and no longer played with stuffed toys. He made a map of the house and charted possible entry points for ants when the kitchen became infested one year. He drank his coffee out of a glass cup so that he could watch the milk and the coffee swirling together, not unlike the ocean currents he studied every day. He kept wooden whistles hidden in various places and would whip them out and play a tune when least expected, much to the embarrassment of me and my sister. He left the outdoor Christmas lights up until March, sometimes even April. He blasted the stereo on Saturday morning and danced around the living room, clapping loudly and whooping it up. He made me and my sister "sing" Santa Baby to him one Christmas when we were already all grown up. He could build anything out of scraps of stuff he found around the house.

I could go on and on.

Tomorrow it will be three years without him here on Earth, but it might as well have been yesterday that I last saw him because all these memories and images are so clear in my head. Whether it's been three years or thirty years, these memories and so many others will never fade.

I love you, Tato.