Tribute

It is so very late. I am never up after 2:00 in the morning, but I just can’t sleep. I have been very sappy lately and tonight has been the epitome of that sappiness. I hope pouring my heart out to the people I love will reap some spiritual fruit, but if not, at least I have said what I feel. I hope my recent desire to tell everyone how much I love them does not mean that God is letting me get my ducks in a row before I am run over by a bus or something. But if he does, I have said I love you an awful lot lately.  But I digress.

Today would have been my dad’s birthday.  I have only had a Xenga a few months and this is the third mention I think I have had of my dad.  I don’t think this is typical of my life, but perhaps I just have never noticed how much I miss him because I have never written  my life down.

TO DAD:

I remember camping in West Virginia in a field of cows and that one wild horse. I remember you taking us caving.

I remember making root beer, maple syrup, soap, and ham. I remember the oat bars.

I remember toboggan rides, snow shovel rides, cross country skiing.

I remember getting locked in the chicken house, and you having to bust out the chicken door so I could crawl out and unlock the door.

I remember you in your green long underwear for your turtle costume, embarrassing Sharon in front of her new boyfriend

I remember you in your wooden shoes, in your flannel shirts, in your caving hat.  I remember you standing at the outhouse door, in the green house (at home and work) and on the barn roof.

I remember cutting down bamboo shoots, digging the potato cellar, riding the moped up the driveway.

I remember the dead possum mugs, the scrimshaw, the honey, the paintings, the wood carvings and leather work, the bull whip, the blow gun, the karate, the kites, the apple cider. the canoeing, the chipmunk backpacks.

I remember you teaching me to drive, to sew, to shingle a house, to change a tire, my oil, my spark plugs, and to do a straddle jump for cheerleading tryouts (even if I didn’t make the team). I remember you taking us to sign language classes as a family.

I remember you teaching us to shoot a bow and arrow, a cross bow, and a gun, how to gut an animal, pluck a chicken, hammer a nail, build a barn.

I remember you taking pictures at every school play and going to every concert even though you hated the concerts.  I remember you making a jean jacket for my cabbage patch doll complete with embroidery on the back.

I remember you going on bike rides with me almost every day during the summers down in Barnegat.

I remember your stories.

I remember you telling me I could be anything that I wanted to be when I grew up. I remember you advice on dating (good and bad).  I remember watching IQ in the theater for New Year’s Eve the year everything had fallen apart.  I remember you giving me the advice I needed to pick the right guy.  I remember standing in my room modeling my wedding dress for you. (I didn’t know that you wouldn’t be there for the big day)

I remember being with you the week before you died, and sanding down that high chair that I loved (even though I had absolutely no plans to need it for a very long time) and had bought  for $2 at a yard sale. I don’t think I will ever be able to get rid of it, even though my kids are long done with high chairs.  I guess God knew I’d need a reminder of my dad when my time for kids came in life.

I remember your Viking funeral (so does Eric who froze wading up to his waste in the Barnegat Bay, 9 years ago today).  I remember laughing waiting to be arrested that day.

I hope you are proud of me. I miss you.