We conclude our series on Fatherhood this week with another cherished recollection of Elisabeth’s father, Philip E. Howard, Jr.
My father’s recreation nearly always included his children. We could count on his doing something with us on Saturday afternoons—walks to the Walnut Lane Bridge or to Thomas’s Place in Fairmount Park where he would miraculously “find” Saltines in the hollow of a tree. A Saltine was a treat for us in those days, and very exciting when extracted from a tree or perhaps from an unsuspecting boy’s pocket. Daddy took us to the zoo, the Planetarium, the Franklin Institute, long rides to the New Jersey Pines or the shore where he taught us to love silence and the smell of pine woods and salt marshes.
Wherever we went he watched for birds. He wanted so badly to give to each of us the love he had had for these beautiful creatures ever since his teen years. I lost a great deal by responding only halfheartedly to his offers of prizes for the numbers of species identified—a Peterson guide book, a pair of field glasses. I was rather like a friend who said he could identify forty birds, but thirty-nine of them were robins. My brothers did much better, earning the prizes and several learning to imitate birdcalls quite well, but none with the perfection of our father. He gave to each of us a special birdcall which he used instead of our name if we were at a slight distance away, in another room, across the street, or in the back yard. Mother’s was the chickadee, mine was the wood pee-wee. As I write, it is springtime on the coast of Massachusetts, and the wood pee-wee has come back for the summer. From time to time the tiny three-note call rings pure and clear from the oak wood next to our house, and I want to run and say, “Yes, Daddy?”
We learned to walk quietly in the woods, stand with hands behind our backs so as not to frighten the birds with sudden movements. We learned to recognize the nests and flight patterns of at least a few birds, and to hear their calls and songs (people do have to be taught to hear things—I learned this again when I lived in the Amazon rain forest and would have missed many jungle sounds if my Indian friends had not called them to my attention).
**Excerpt originally from Shaping of a Christian Family, pp 90-91