I said in the feature article for this month’s theme of “Creativity” that everything I know of creativity came from my mom. Well, that’s actually not the complete truth.

My dad, it turns out, was an incredibly imaginative and creative person, too, and he passed that gene on to all his kids.

Although my father was educated as an attorney, he was curious about all kinds of things. When he and my mother were first married, he began to experiment in her father’s pattern-making shop, learning the craft of woodworking.

Dad’s favorite wood was walnut, and even his first pieces of furniture, though made with relatively few tools, were works of art. He figured out how to add interest to the sides of the first sofas and chairs he built by creating elongated hexagons with walnut pieces carefully fitted together, as shown in this picture of him holding me. Then my mother upholstered the furniture, and the pieces have lasted more than sixty years.

It was sitting on this sofa that he picked up his drafting board, thumbtacked paper into place, and began drafting blueprints for the house in which I would grow up. Unencumbered by any architectural bias of how a house “ought” to be designed, he imagined ours “upside down”: the entry was at ground level, with one staircase leading up and the other down; bedrooms were downstairs, halfway below ground; and living room, dining room, kitchen, and library were upstairs. He wanted us all to be able to crawl from our beds to safety if there were ever a fire.

As Dad continued to create, he honed his skills and expanded the number of tools in our garage. He worked steadily and happily, whistling or singing all the while. In my memory, the sound of whistling and singing are intertwined with the buzz of a table saw: “Then sings my soul, my zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.” It took me years to learn the lyrics to that hymn!

Under the easy-going guidance of our father, each of my brothers and I learned to use those tools. Dad patiently taught me to use a wood lathe: how to center the wood, rough it in with chisels, and then perfect the graceful curves. He showed me the magic of sanding the piece on the lathe, progressing through finer and finer grit sandpaper until using steel wool to see the heart of the wood begin to glow.

Over the years, I saw my father puzzle through increasingly challenging designs—and this was long before the internet! When things weren’t working out as he’d planned, instead of giving up, he took it as a new and interesting challenge, modeling patience, flexibility and ingenuity.

On this Father’s Day, I think of my dad and all that he instilled in me. I am grateful for his humor, his wit, and his love of family. And I am especially grateful for the lessons he taught me about creating things, not just of wood, but of patience and love.

Until next time,