Thanks for the Packers Garb, Daddy-O!

The first thing he did the day he moved in, was thrust a Packer lawn flag into my flower bed. He, of course, was wearing his Packers jersey, Packers sweatpants and long-sleeve Packers t-shirt. 

With him came a Packers bed spread, Packers blankets, personalized Packers license plate, Packers parka, Packers sneakers, Packers pillows, Packers tissue box and just when I thought my jaw could drop no further, the huge box arrived.

My birth dad, Bill, was a fan of the Packers the way I’m a fan of oxygen. The Christmas ornament he left on my desk was a Packers football. He signed every greeting card with “Go Pack,’’ and because I’d only ever seen the guy wear non-Packers garb at various weddings, including mine, I knew his closet would be a blur of green and gold.

So, today, a year and a day since cancer crumbled his insides, (if the official Green Bay Packers store had offered an urn, - and trust me, my sister and I looked – his ashes would be in it) my husband and I picked through his closet to outfit ourselves properly for today’s Super Bowl.

A Redskin fan from birth, I had to adjust to all this Green Bay business. But, as Daddy-o said many, many times, “Packer people are cool.’’ No place is this more evident than his Facebook page.

A year after his death, Bill Quinn’s page is still a flurry of recent photos of his grandkids, comments from his friends and posts from the Packer people – the kind of learned football folks who can tell you how many yards Aaron Rodgers has thrown for this year and in an instant compare those stats to numbers for Brett Favre, Don Majkowsi – heck, clear back to Bart Starr.

Of the few boxes Bill shipped to our house when he moved in back in November 2009, the one he worried most about was the one that arrived last.

By the time Fed Ex tracked down the package, the crunched, cardboard monstrosity landed on the front porch with tape flapping. I’ve never seen a dying guy move so fast: he whipped past me, hulked the cumbersome package into the house and swore up a storm. It was a flash of that Irish anger that I’d only heard about – like that time in his early, wild years when he shot his TV (perhaps the Packers had lost?).

Bill knifed a slit down the side and out tumbled a Packers bar stool and accompanying plush rug. Now, his back had been shot since he was young, and no way was this increasingly sickly guy going to comfortably sit on a stool to root for anyone. I burst out laughing.

 “This? This is what you’ve been waiting for? What are you going to do with this?’’

 Bill cocked his head in that way that let me know I was about to feel stupid.

“It’s for you, duh.’’

 Turns out, a Packers bar stool was, in fact the, perfect accompaniment to the pool table and bar out in the garage, the entertainment center of our house.  

 I, myself will choose a chair with a back today as I scream props for the Packers against the Steelers in Super Bowl XLV. But I will be sporting Daddy-o’s hat, a T-shirt, two pins and the green and gold laces he left in his drawer. Because “one must represent.’’

Go Pack!