It's strange to lose a father who's always been there, since the beginning of memory—in the foreground or the background of our lives. How can we all still be here, trying to go on as before, when part of us is somewhere else? Shouldn't we pile into the old station wagon together and drive off into the sunset? But then, who decides when it’s time to go? We wouldn't want to leave THAT up to John Foley, who was always the first one ready to leave. I’m number two in the Foley children lineup. My claim to fame is that I share the same birth date as my father. Every eleven years our ages mirrored digits, so we were 3 and 30, 14 and 41, 25 and 52, etc. He gave it as a word problem to his high school math students. But to me it meant far more than numbers; it was our special bond. Every November 2, in whatever circumstances I found myself spinning, I’d always remember to pause and pick up the phone to wish us a Happy Birthday. It was like a hub, an unchanging center, a reference point. We were just two and half years shy of 58 and 85 when the chain was finally broken. Growing up with John Foley was baffling for me. Early on, he struck me as remote, intimidating, and somehow sad, like The Selfish Giant behind his stone wall, in the Oscar Wilde children’s story. I loved when he’d walk me around on his feet, as I held onto legs that were like strong columns and stood on huge black Oxford shoes. I was often invited to sit on his feet to hold them down while he did sit ups, counting out loud together: 48…49…50! (No doubt a remnant of his army training.) I even gauged linear distances by picturing the number of times he could lie down across a given space, like a 6-foot-2-inch ruler. I can still hear his ominous, resonant voice as he recited us Longfellow’s poem “The Children’s Hour” as if it were an old-time murder mystery: Between the dark and the daylight, When the night is beginning to lower, Comes a pause in the day's occupations, That is known as the Children's Hour. I hear in the chamber above me The patter of little feet, The sound of a door that is opened, And voices soft and sweet. From my study I see in the lamplight, Descending the broad hall stair, Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra, And Edith with golden hair… In the early 1960s, we went on long walks together hand in hand, around the Elmwood neighborhood in Holyoke, especially Hillside Avenue, where he’d grown up. I never knew this was his way of sharing his enduring attachment to the places and people he’d known as a boy. One day, on one of our walks, I ventured to ask him a personal question: “Daddy? What’s your favorite color? “Mine’s orange.” “I don’t have a favorite color, they’re all equal,” was the response. I knew right then that this was going to be a tough nut to crack. The man of the 1960s was a busy math teacher, working his way up, earning advanced degrees, while fully supporting his family of eight. He taught high school students by day, community college students by night, and seminary students in between. I just thought this was what all fathers did. At home he’d pore over math tests, meting out D’s and F’s--and the rare A++--in red pencil. We knew his best students by name, because he mentioned them often. To my father, they were part of an extended family. An avid golfer, he once gave me the honor of serving as his10-year-old caddy. After hauling a man-sized bag of clubs around the green for a few hours in relentless heat--relieved only by running through the giant sprinklers--I plopped down beside him at the snack bar counter. Devouring a burger and fries, I read through the “Ten Commandments for Golfers” on my placemat. One of them caught my eye: “Thou Shalt Not Engage the Services of a Caddy Without Remuneration.” “What’s remuneration?” I asked suspiciously. “You’re eating it,” was the reply. He walked around the house singing random bits of popular Irish songs with conviction, the same way he sang the hymns in church every Sunday. (Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ra…) He also listened frequently to Clancy Brothers and crackly John McCormack records (the great Irish tenor). Elaine remembers that he often sang lines from "The Green Bushes": As I was a walking one morning in May, To hear the birds whistlin' and see the lambs play, I spied a young maiden, so sweetly sang she, Down by the green bushes where she chanced to meet me As a budding flower child, I couldn’t relate: “What is with that weird Irish music?” I wondered, convinced that he did it just to be annoying. In the 70s, I saw him as a sort of educated Archie Bunker, in his chair-cum-soapbox. He judged and critiqued, drily quipped and loudly pontificated as if he were always in front of the blackboard. My growth was measured by comparing our hand sizes; my strength of character tested in vigorous handshakes, preparing me to take my place in a man’s world. With his six children, he trudged through algebra and geometry and lurched toward calculus, taking each of us on as we came of age. Some of us absorbed it and some didn’t, but he forged ahead tirelessly, hoping to imbue us with a love for his subject. Math formulas began spilling onto paper dinner napkins and filling newspaper margins, as he discovered that my older sister had a mind with no apparent limit. John Foley could never do a thing halfway, and with his children he set the bar as high as we could reach. Whenever we gave him any flack, he'd just walk away singing the refrain: Dear Old Dad, The robin sings About you... None of us had any idea where it came from; it was just part of who he was. It turns out that it was his own adaptation of the old barbershop song "Dear Old Girl”: Dear Old Girl, the robin sings above you, Dear Old Girl, it speaks of how I love you… On school days at 7:30am, his cheerful “Top ‘o the mornin’ to ya’s” were especially hard for me to take. Could anyone eagerly go to high school every day? No—therefore, I concluded that he must be doing it to annoy me. Even more baffling was the tall shelf stacked with math books in his bedroom. He seemed to read these for pleasure, when he wasn’t buried in the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle. “I finished it all—in PEN!” he’d boast, challenging us to sharpen our vocabularies. Games of Scrabble turned into matches of wits that lasted for days. He was also the guy waiting impatiently outside in the car for us all—horn honking, motor idling, parked in the adrenaline zone. He took his role as a provider seriously, went to work and came home and turned every penny over to my mother to run the household. He made it so that we could all have our stay-at-home mother to ourselves in our formative years. The dark side was that Dad could be irate, stressed, and he was always worried about money. One of his main values was economic security, driven by the sense of "not enough," from his boyhood terror of starvation. In the early 1990s, he was brought to his knees by a health crisis that forced him to retire early from full-time teaching at Holyoke High School. We came to know a different man—one who was more fragile and vulnerable but also more affectionate and tolerant of the imperfections and differences of others. Or perhaps he was finally learning what not to say out loud. Life was teaching him humility, whether he wanted to learn the lesson or not. I began to see the feelings behind the figurehead; the honesty behind the bluntness; the loyalty behind the stubbornness. He was still handsome, standing straight and tall, with thick silver-grey hair, dressed in his beloved Hickey Freeman suits at social functions and family gatherings. He beamed proudly at my belated college graduation, secretly relieved that I’d finally given up on the dance career. As a new grandfather in the late-90s, he watched eagerly for the spark of numerical aptitude in his toddler-granddaughter’s brain. Another willing student, perhaps? Another blank slate to fill with equations? When I lived alone in Berkeley in the late 90s, I could set my clock by his phone calls—precisely 6pm PST every Sunday: “It’s your father, just calling to see how you’re doing.” My fear of not measuring up to his high standards was surpassed only by my desire to see him light up with a “That’s marvelous, Ann,” at the mastery of any new skill—a desire that still propels me through life. By the end of the seventh decade, John completed his work which he had done, and he rested. Summing up everything he’d accomplished, he saw that it was good. In fact--it was “excellent.” Beyond his wildest dreams. He’d gotten the girl, and what she brought to his life no numbers could ever measure. He’d even met the Dalai Lama face to face, on one of his walks with my mother around the Mt. Holyoke campus about a year ago. Clearly he was on the right path to a graceful exit. And while Mother often reminded us that she’d put him there, he also had the good sense to listen. In 2011, as he passed the eighty-year mark, he was openly amazed that he was still here. But he was also noticeably slowing down. He traveled rarely, talked less, and spent much of his time quietly at home. Sensing that the end was approaching, he’d say: “I’ve had a wonderful life; I’ve already lived much longer than both my parents did…I loved my work and provided for my family…I’m proud of all my kids…there’s nothing more I wanted to do.” John Foley always knew when it was time to leave. Throughout the decades, I’m not sure my father and I ever really understood each other or agreed on anything. But he gave me something firm to stand on, and then something to push against as I launched into the wide world. He taught me how to wrestle with any type of problem until I found my own solution. (“I know it’s hard, Ann, but try anyway.") He led me to believe there was nothing I couldn’t master if I invested myself fully in it. I’d recently been working on folksongs that I wanted to play and sing for him. I know he would have sat in his corner without apparently listening, and then said softly: “That was nice, Ann,” when no one else did. Beneath our surface differences, his message ran through my veins: “We’ll always be part of each other. You were my favorite birthday present.” For I have you fast in my fortress, And will not let you depart, But put you down into the dungeon In the round-tower of my heart. And there will I keep you forever, Yes, forever and a day, Till the walls shall crumble to ruin, And moulder in dust away!