My father and I were both morning people. My earliest memory of him was a very early morning growing up in Virginia. I had wandered into the kitchen in my white T-shirt and he was there in a white T-shirt, too. I think my mother ironed our T-shirts because in my memory even though we had slept in them, they were very white and crisp, a nice contrast to our 1960’s tiled, pinkish-beige, cookie cutter kitchen. The light was entering the kitchen along with me, through a window above the sink, making prisms and shadows, and defining things as only light can do. My father was there, crisp and awake and no doubt on his second cup of coffee when he winked at me, saying “Good Morning, Good Morning”. He said this twice, in a lyrical cadence, a jaunty “the sun came up another day, let’s see what the world has to offer” intonation. He had a very deep and resonating voice. I will always remember his voice, reading to us, calm and intelligent, with a slight sprinkling of high expectations.

My father’s voice is with me in the voice of my brother, son, and nephew. If I had known my grandfather, it may have been his voice too. Voices come and go but words might stay and visit us a little longer than expected. Words can overstay their welcome. But a beautiful voice never stays too long, it’s more like a house guest you wish could stay one more day. The one who makes the bed, folds the towel, and says “please” and “thank you” without provocation. The world does not always appreciate a beautiful, polite, voice, but we usually miss it when it’s gone.

On this early morning, as I remember it, my father scooped me up and showed me the cuckoo-clock in the kitchen. Sleep was just getting out of my eyes, and I saw little black dots as I put the world back together from dreamland. He tried to see the dots with me and to “catch” them. I was very happy that he could see the little sleep dots too. My father could see things no one else could. He understood things that only an accelerator splitting an atom might know. He understood that the world was there for us to study, and if we were lucky and worked hard, to understand. My father was a detective of sorts, he taught us to observe, record, and to question just about everything. Except maybe him.

Years later my father is elderly and using a walker. I flew in the night before and awoke before him, one cup of coffee already into the day. I have a to-do list a mile long that I left more than 1000 miles away. Now our morning ritual is reversed. My father is shaking off sleep dots, trying to wake up. I am trying to slow down and see things from his perspective, to see the dots connecting his small, atomic world. He is wearing a very slept-in white T-shirt. Our mother is gone and there are no more ironed T-shirts, now the shirts have anti-wrinkle guard and the dryers do too. My father’s strokes have left him slightly disabled, but he is still sharper than a tack. His world is smaller now and he nods at me and smiles, pointing out the light coming through the window making prisms on the floor.

I open the curtains and walk over to the bird-cage where the little canary named after my father’s favorite scientist, Enrico Fermi, is sleeping. There is a sheet covering the cage and I remove it, one hand on the sheet and one clinging to my father’s PT belt as he unsteadily stands up with his walker.

My father squints, walking very slowly over to the cage. He peers in between the little green bars as the bird chirp-chirps back with the light of day. “Good Morning, Enrico”, “Good Morning”, he says twice to his little feathered friend in his rich and soothing voice. It is music to my ears.

(Author’s note:  This is a revised version of a eulogy I shared at my father’s memorial service, May 2014.)