Love Thursday: Happy Father's Day, Dad
"There's something like a line of gold thread running through a man's words when he talks to his daughter, and gradually over the years it gets to be long enough for you to pick up in your hands and weave into a cloth that feels like love itself."
~John Gregory Brown, Decorations in a Ruined Cemetery, 1994
Dear Dad,
We always had fun celebrating you on Father's Day. You'd get homemade cards (some I still have saved upstairs), the usual coffee mugs and soap on a rope, and once a giant homemade chocolate chip cookie. I remember making it as big and wide as the cookie tray. You loved that.
You'd get to go golfing with your bank buddy friends, too. You'd pack up early and head out for a day on our little hometown golf course. Every now and then, you'd head to Arizona with them and really have a fun time. I have video of you playing on one of those trips with your best friend, Gene. You'd be happy to know I still keep in touch with him. He's so much older now and having a hard time getting around. He looks the same, very sweet man. He was recovering from heart surgery the morning he got the news you'd died. Gene has always felt horrible he couldn't be at your funeral.
After you died, I quit college and moved to a different city to be closer to family, but someplace else I could attend school. In a strange turn of events, I ended up moving into my first apartment on Father's Day. Your other friend, Larry, and his boys helped me move my furniture and other things up and helped me get settled.
And Father's Day for many years following were just rough. I hated being in card shops with anymore reminders of what I wasn't going to be doing that day. It's funny how a single occasion can really wreck a person for a week or two.
And now?
Now, I've got this beautiful little boy who adores his father. He looks for him nightly to come home, just like I did with you. He begs him to come play the 'Spiderman game' and to help him 'get the bad guys'. My husband teaches my son to ride his bike, how to eat an ice cream cone right, and the difference between baseball and football. My husband reads the same books over and over to The Bug at night. He's a good dad to our son.
Happy Father's Day, Dad. I hope wherever you are, you know your words haven't been lost on me. I hope you know I ask myself, "What would dad do now?" and usually follow that advice. I hope you know I still think of you and talk about you. And of course, that I still love you and wish you could have been around to be a grandpa. You would've been a great grandpa. Mostly, because you were such a great daddy.
Just like the picture that hung on your wall in the office (and that now hangs in my husband's):
"Anyone can be a father, but it takes someone special to be a daddy".
Love,
Me
Labels: daddy, happy father's day
