A SPECIAL FATHER'S DAY GIFT

Father's Day this year will be more about my children than myself.

I spent most of April in Dallas helping him recuperate from his injuries, both physical and mental. Dane had disappeared for about three days in early April before his friends finally located him in the intensive care unit of Baylor MedicalCenter in Dallas. His single-vehicle accident, which demolished his car and almost took his life, happened on a late, rainy Thursday night. It was Monday before his mother and I got the news.

After discussing his injuries by phone on Tuesday with his doctor, Faye boarded a plane for Dallas the next day. She spent the next seven nights in his room on a foldout hospital chair, making sure Dane, with a severe head injury, did not get up during the middle of the night and wander dangerously about hospital corridors.

Our plan was for her to go first, then I would follow a few days later in our car. After more than a week, and needing to return to her classroom, with Dane scheduled to go home in a few days, Faye returned to Bainbridge after I drove the thousand miles to Dallas.

It was my turn to spend several nights on the foldout chair in his hospital room.

Before leaving for Dallas, I told Rex Sanders, who was going to mind the bookstore while I was gone, that I was headed for Dallas and had no idea when I would return. Nearly a month passed before I did.

During the month of April, Dane and I got to know one another, perhaps some might say, again for the first time.

And so, after more than two weeks in Baylor Medical Center, Dane came home. My job was to help him get back on his feet then transport him daily for the next several weeks, back and forth to Baylor for intensive mental and physical rehabilitation therapy. Earlier that week before Faye left, while still in the hospital, the three of us were shocked when the Baylor people said the rehabilitation program could take as long as 12 weeks, maybe more.

Dane was quite upset.

"I'm not going," he kept saying to his mother and me. "No way am I going to spend 12 weeks in rehab. I can get better at home by myself." He was adamant.

After Faye returned to Bainbridge, my assignment was to convince Dane that it was vital for him to participate in the rehab program at Baylor no matter how long it took, particularly to regain 100 percent brain function. Our first weekend at home was spent mostly on my discussing the merits of reporting to Baylor at 9 a.m. on Monday morning, and Dane discussing the merits of staying home. Dane had convinced himself that he could stay at home, rest and recuperate on his own.

Bad idea, everyone said, yet he could not be swayed. He convinced himself it was not worth the 12-week effort. I knew it was his injured brain reacting, not thinking clearly.

Any parent has to be careful how one talks to their adult children, especially a 40-year-old son who is extremely independent.

No preaching. No directives. No orders. No pronouncements. Suggestions are presented with options. Let them think it through without parental pressure and come to their own conclusions.

On the first weekend home, sitting on his back patio, we discussed some options. Then, out of the blue, he asked me, "What do you want for Father's Day?"

"I want you to get well," I said. "On Monday morning, I want you to get in the car and let me drive you to Baylor."

I remembered my own trauma in February 2000 when I took an unscheduled ambulance ride from Bainbridge to Tallahassee Regional Medical Center where I was to have bypass surgery to recover from a heart attack. I learned then that you have to give yourself to the professionals. In critical health situations, you don't countermand their orders, think you can heal yourself, or dismiss their advice.

You place your life in their hands, let them take care of you and make you well again.

I told Dane my thoughts. "Place yourself in the hands of the professionals," I said. "Let them do their job.

I got my gift.

On Monday morning, and for the next three weeks, we drove to the Baylor Rehabilitation Center. He fussed, but reluctantly went.

Almost every day I reminded him, "Let them take care of you." I told him that if he had to be someplace for this kind of rehabilitation, he couldn't be in a better place.

In between hours at Baylor, we did many things together. Since his vehicle was demolished in the accident, we spent weekends browsing car lots discussing the merits of various models. He even asked my opinion over several selections. We filled out insurance papers, gathered official documents about the accident, went out to dinner, bought new clothes, went to the grocery store and shopped for a new laptop computer for mom.

Today, after more than two months since the accident, Dane goes back to work. As a computer engineer, he needs his brain functioning 100 percent. Baylor cleared him to return to work and to drive again.

The incident has left all of us closer. He calls almost daily to chat. There are frequent calls back and forth between his brother and sister and their children.

Although the accident happened in Dallas, it was a very Bainbridge event. Wherever we go, his mother and I get asked, "How is your son?"

He received cards from people and from church groups here in Bainbridge, signed by people he did not know and by some we did not know. Our friends said special prayers for him at churches we did not know, and many sent gifts and flowers.

Our family has been warmly touched by the outpouring of well wishes. He sent thank-you-notes. We are all richer for the experience.

Now it's Father's Day. My own father has been gone since 1972. He never met his grandchildren, he never saw me through my young teen years, and he never saw his two children from a second marriage get beyond elementary school age. Yet Joseph Elliston Smith was a good, kind and decent man. I see traces of him in my two sons.

I also pay tribute on this day to Faye's dad, Walter Julian Dockery, who died when she was 16, and to her step-dad, who was grandfather to my children, a man whose memory I cherish every day, and perhaps one of the most caring men I have ever known, James Cary McJenkins.

In remembrance also to my daughter in law's dad, the late Leon County Deputy Sheriff James Alford, and to my son in law's dad, the late Lt. Col. Thomas J. Knox, US Army.

From my own children, I need no special gift on this day.

Faye and I have discovered that our children have grown to be caring and responsible adults, good citizens and stewards, loving and nurturing parents to their own children.

We know that as we get older, when our bones will creak, and our joints will refuse to bend, when the neurons in our brains will go in odd directions and scatter our thoughts, should all that occur, we are absolutely certain all three of our children will be there for us, that we will be in their good hands.

On this Father's Day and on Mother's Day too, those are our gifts.