My Father-in-Law was an amazing man. And to this day we still wonder: How did he know?

Back when I first started seeing (the future) Mrs. MZM (actually, I think we’d known each other only a few weeks), she asked me to go with her to pick up her dad from his weekly visit to his clinic (he was on dialysis a total of 10 years before he passed away).

She had a wonderful relationship with both her father and mother (who had gone to Heaven some years earlier), and on treatment days customarily took him to dinner before dropping him off at the senior apartments where he lived.

We picked him up, got him safely into the car, and headed to the local cafeteria. (Now bear in mind, this was my first introduction to him, so I had no idea what to expect.) Dinner went well, considering it was a “first time to meet” sortof thing. We ate, had a nice conversation, and left.

At the time, the two of us lived completely across Houston from each other (as the crow flies, about 50 miles), so after dinner, she dropped me off (I lived fairly close by the restaurant) before taking her father to his apartment. As she was helping him out, he slyly looked at her and said, “Well, I guess I’ll have to be getting’ out the ol’ monkey suit!” (Meaning, of course, a tuxedo. You DO know what a tuxedo is don’t you?)

She was completely flabbergasted (which is as you know, is derived from a Russian word that translates roughly as What in tarnation are you talkin’ about?!) She of course denied having any intentions at all (which was true… at least, at the time), and did her best to dissuade him of any further ideas along those lines.

Ironically enough, he knew she had been dating someone else for quite a while (and in the immortal words of Maxwell Smart, Secret Agent Extraordinaire: “Sorry about that, Chief!”), but during that entire relationship, her father had never said or implied anything even remotely like this!

About a year later, we were married. And to this day we still wonder, How did he know?

I wrote along these lines in a post back in January of this year called Footprints. In it, I spoke of how the evidence of our lives and the things we do and say, even when we’re not around, tell others volumes about us.

Just think (try it; it won’t hurt – much!): if others can tell so much about us, even when we’re not around, then why should we be surprised at what they can perceive when we are! It’s a sobering thought.

All I can think of is there must have been something in the way we acted with each other. I mean, I did the usual gentlemanly things: held her door for her; took her hand whenever we walked together, etc., and in truth, I was already falling in love with her.

Yes, but marriage? It simply wasn’t “on the table” yet, as far as we were concerned. Nevertheless, there must have been something in what we said or how we acted with each other; something that presented his sharper and more experienced mind with enough evidence to recognize what we ourselves didn’t even know. But he knew.

Dad always knows.

(This story was prompted by the question posed by GL Hoffman over at What Would Dad Say, where he asks for a response to his question, “What did your dad say?” Why not share the wealth? Pop on over and contribute something! And yes, your father will know. He always knows.)