父亲节英语美文

父亲节英语美文：乐观的爸爸

The wisdom my 77-year-old father has passed on to me came more through osmosis than lectures. Pinning down a dad's influence to one true thing is like saying that the final inning is all that matters in a baseball game—when in reality, it's every play up until then that has gotten the team to where it is. And my dad has been there since the first pitch. From making "the best pancakes you kids have ever eaten" on Saturday mornings, to assuring tearful teenagers studying for finals that all they needed was a good night's sleep and everything would be better in the morning, my dad's dogged optimism shines through. It is a big part of the reason I recovered after a pelvis-smashing accident, when I was run over by a truck: My father assumed that I'd be jogging with him again。

He would also be the first to note that a grand slam by the last batter in a two-run game can change everything. In that he's a realist. But the thing about Dad is that he believes he is the guy who will hit that ball out of the park in the clutch play. Even though his first great-grandchild was born a year and a half ago, he's still that kid on the bench saying, "Put me in, Coach."

Old age hasn't slowed him, mainly because he doesn't think almost-80 is old. I should have taken a photo of my dad swimming in the lake in front of our cabin in Alaska last summer to show you what

he looks like. He is strong, bald and about 5'10", 150 pounds, with a long French nose, blue eyes and a great smile. He had come for a visit and was training for a charity swim across the Hudson River in New York, where he lives. He wore his custom-fitted wetsuit (it zips up the back, so we had to help him into it)，but he still got so cold that when I hauled him, leaky goggles were all fogged up and I feared he'd die of hypothermia. We warmed him by stoking the woodstove and parking him, wrapped in a sleeping bag, as close to the open oven door as we could without cooking his legs。

"Oh, come on, it wasn't that bad," he'll say, when he reads this. "I was fine." Which he was. He always is. He did complete the Hudson swim a month later in New York, but told me over the phone that next time he'll make sure his wetsuit fits correctly (in haste, he pulled it on backward) and buy new goggles. (They filled up with water and he bumped into Pete Seeger's moored sailboat—the folk singer is the race's organizer。)

If you ask my father whether or not his life has been hard, he will say he is a lucky guy. Not in a Hollywood way—he means the kind of happiness that comes from sharing a well-cooked family meal, taking a good long run or growing a perfect tomato. Did I mention that he used to run marathons before his knee replacement surgery? He's the one who convinced me I could do it, too. "Anyone can run a