So today is father’s day. Like most daughters, my relationship with my father has gone through peaks and valleys. We’re alike and different in ways that lead to much angst and frustration on both sides.
Strangely enough it was my moving thousands of miles away that seemed to smooth over a lot of things. I’m guessing there is something about that sort of distance that puts many of the frustration and arguments in perspective. Or maybe he was just all kinds of jazzed that I was going to be a lawyer.
He taught me how to ride a bike. He still reminds me to check the oil in my car. Every time I stop by, he checks the tires. I got my musical ability from him. He has two guitars, a mandolin, a violin/fiddle (he likes bluegrass so he calls it a fiddle) and a banjo. Wait I think he has a dulcimer, too. I can’t keep up.
He used to make up these wild bedtime stories when I was wee enough for fathers to tell their daughters bedtime stories. He would put himself and me as the hero and heroine of the stories and use our pets and the animals in the woods as our villians. Yeah we got them every time.
He calls me hopalong or molasses. He has the most disgusting feet in the history of feet. That man needed a pedi about twenty years ago. Now I can’t bear the thought of some beauty parlor nail person enduring the havoc that is my father’s feet. I’m sure she would charge him triple. TRIPLE y’all.
He’s incredibly patient except when dealing with his tools. He’ll cuss out the screw driver and the stuck screw like it slept with his wife. He has a sense of humor. When he was in the hospital, the nurse told him that she was giving him half a pill. He asked if it was the right half or the left half. Yeah they got a kick out of him in the cardiac wing.
So today I say thank you for everything Dad. You’re the bestest.
