It’s Father’s Day in a couple of weeks. Although my Dad has been in that great piano bar in the sky for almost 30 years, keeping time with his left foot while playing “Someone to Watch Over Me,” I’m the lucky one who’s being watched. By Big Neil.

And warmed by musical memories.

On Father’s Day, I’ll wave at his photograph in my bedroom. Hi, Dad. I promise to make my bed with crisp square corners. Yes, you can bounce a quarter on it. Though the morning is still, I’ll hear your expressive hands playing stride piano, warming up the first chords of “You Took Advantage of Me.”

That song always started the session. I never knew the lyrics until he was dying. Mom and I were auditioning a piano player for his memorial service, so I hummed a few bars of whatever that song was when his hands first hit the ivories.

“Oh, that’s ‘You Took Advantage of Me’,” the pianist declared. “Haven’t heard that one for a while.” So there are words to this song? It was like discovering that Mozart forgot to tell us about the lyrics for the Minuet in G that was really called “Point Your Toes and Dance, Baby!”

For a Swedish kid, growing up in Duluth in the ’20s with a taste for root beer and cinnamon rolls and a mother who directed the choir and a father who studied the pipe organ at the American Conservatory of Music, how did he learn to play jazz? I’ll think about that again, on Father’s Day.

He called himself a piano player. My mom was a classical pianist. “Nah,” Dad said, “I’m just a piano player.”

I’ll look at that picture and remember the smile he’d get in his eyes when he’d discover the perfect chord. “Now that’s a good one,” he’d say, and roll it again, turning an ear toward the harp of the piano to really soak it in. Maybe roll it one more time for good measure.

“Dad, I want to learn what Susie Allison plays.” Starting at about age 5, I dared to take the treble for a few duets.

“That awful Spinning Song?” he mumbled. He didn’t want to hurt Susie’s feelings, but the Allisons were about as square as Rubik. “I got something better.”

So he taught me “I’ll Take Manhattan” and “Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most.” Not exactly from Alfred’s Beginning Piano songbook. I don’t think Manhattan has ever been taken so many times.

I’m all for you, “Body and Soul.” That was one of his standards, and music was the soul component for him. The body part was Swedish pancakes. Cinnamon rolls. Apple pie. And a mean Ramos gin fizz.

On Father’s Day, I’ll look at his picture and remember his charm, his grace, how he’d introduce himself to our new neighbors, extending a warm handshake, “Hi, I’m Neil. Anytime you need a strong back and a weak mind, I’m your man.” You were always so kind, Dad.

When his gaze catches mine from that photo on Father’s Day, I’ll know that behind his gentle, serene smile is a devilish engineer who created enough crazy gadgets to put Rube Goldberg out of business. We never had an alarm in our house because Dad booby-trapped the staircase like the kid in “Home Alone.” Open the door and you’d be hit with a flying grapefruit and a bucket of nails.

So Happy Father’s Day, Dad. Wherever you are. I hope you get the chords just right on a freshly tuned Steinway grand. I hope you don’t mess up the bridge in “Street of Dreams.” I hope someone makes Swedish pancakes for you up there and maybe you can share them with Oscar Peterson or Art Tatum. And I hope they have iPods in heaven. You won’t believe iTunes. You can even find old Teddy Wilson arrangements.

Hey, Dad, you have a bunch of great-grandchildren and, oh, are they cute. One is even named after you and has the same twinkle in his eyes. But you already know that, don’t you? Oh, how I wish you could play “Limehouse Blues” for them and show them how to boobytrap the playhouse.

As a kid when life hung me up, Dad took to the keyboard and sang:

Nothing’s impossible, I have found,

For when my chin is on the ground I . . .

Pick myself up, dust myself off, and start all over again.

I have started over again, Dad. Many times. I’m still a little dusty, but I’m working on it.

And, Dad, thanks for watching. I love you.

You can reach Elizabeth Kirby at kirby@theacorn.com or visit her blog at http://open.salon.com/blog/ elizabethkirby.