When I found him, he was half under the Mustang, with only his bottom half showing. Talking to my dad in the garage was often like talking to a poorly stored mannequin.

“Hey, Dad.”

“Who’s there?”

In his midsixties, my dad had begun to lose his hearing.

“It’s me, Russ.”

“Russ? What the hell are you doing here?”

“I thought I’d bring London over to say hi. She’s inside with Mom and Marge and Liz.”

“Cute kid,” he said. From my dad, that was about as gushy a compliment as he’d ever offer, even though he adored her. Truth was, he loved nothing better than to have London sit in his lap while he was watching a ball game.

“Mom says you couldn’t catch your breath the other day. She thinks you should see a doctor.”

“Your mom worries too much.”

“When was the last time you saw a doctor?”

“I don’t know. A year ago, maybe? He said I was fit as a fiddle.”

“Mom says it was longer than that.”

“Maybe it was…”

I watched his hand pick through a series of wrenches by his hip and then vanish under the car. It was my cue to ease up, or at the very least change the subject. “What’s up with the car?”

“Small oil leak. Just trying to figure out why. I think the filter might be faulty.”

“You would know.” I, on the other hand, wouldn’t have been able to find the oil filter. We were different, my dad and me.

“How’s business?” he asked.

“Slow,” I admitted.

“I figured it might be. Tough thing, starting your own business.”

“Do you have any advice?”

“Nope. I’m still not even sure what it is that you do.”

“We’ve talked about this a hundred times. I come up with advertising campaigns, script commercials, and design print and digital ads.”

He finally rolled out from beneath the car, his hands and fingernails grease-stained.

“Are you the one who does those car commercials? The ones where the guy is always yelling and screaming about the latest great deal?”

“No.” I’d answered this question before, too.

“I hate those commercials. They’re too loud. I use the mute button.”

It was one of the reasons I tried to talk dealership owners out of raising their voices – most viewers hit the mute button.

“I know. You’ve told me.”

He slowly began to rise. Watching my dad get up was like watching a mountain forced upward by the collision of tectonic plates.

“You said London was here?”

“She’s inside.”

“Vivian, too, I guess.”

“No. She had some things to do today.”

He continued to wipe his hands. “She doing women stuff?”

I smiled. For my dad – an old-fashioned sexist at heart – women stuff described pretty much everything my mom did these days, from cooking and cleaning to clipping coupons and grocery shopping.

“Yes. Women stuff.”

He nodded, thinking that made perfect sense, and I cleared my throat. “Did I tell you that Vivian’s thinking of going back to work?”

“Hmm.”

“It’s not because we need the money. She’s been talking about this for a while, you know. With London starting school, I mean.”

“Hmm.”

“I think it will be good for her. Something easy, something part-time. She’d be bored otherwise.”

“Hmm.”

I hesitated. “What do you think?”

“About what?”

“Vivian thinking of going back to work. My new agency.”

He scratched at his ear, buying time. “Did you ever think that maybe you shouldn’t have quit your job in the first place?”

My dad, as much of a man’s man that he was, wasn’t a risk taker. For him, having a steady job and receiving a regular paycheck more than outweighed any potential reward of running his own business. Seven years ago, the former owner of the plumbing business had offered to let my dad buy it; my dad had passed on the offer, and the business was purchased by another, younger employee with entrepreneurial dreams.

To be frank, I hadn’t expected him to offer me much in the way of career advice. That, too, was outside my dad’s comfort zone, but I didn’t hold it against him. He and I had led different lives; where I’d gone to college, he’d graduated from high school and spent time on a destroyer in Vietnam. He’d married at nineteen and was a father by twenty-two; his parents had died in a car accident a year after that. He worked with his hands while I worked with my mind, and while his view of the world – black and white, good and bad – may have seemed simplistic to some, it also provided a road map for how a real man was supposed to lead his life. Get married. Love your wife and treat her with respect. Have children, and teach them the value of hard work. Do your job. Don’t complain. Remember that family – unlike most of those people you might meet in life – will always be around. Fix what can be fixed or get rid of it. Be a good neighbor. Love your grandchildren. Do the right thing.

Good rules. Actually, they were great rules and for the most part, they’d stayed intact throughout his life. One, however, had fallen by the wayside, and was no longer on his list. My dad had been raised Southern Baptist, and Marge and I had gone to services on both Wednesday evenings and Sundays throughout our youth. We’d gone to vacation Bible school every summer, and my parents never questioned whether or not to go to church. Like the other rules, it wasn’t abandoned until soon after Marge told my parents that she was gay.