DadderBoy!

Today has been a slow Saturday. My daughter went on a very long bike ride, & it's been very quiet in my house (except for Otis' barking for attention). My husband has caught my nasty cold & is resting. I feel there are brighter days ahead, but right now they are slow in coming. I am also very mindful that this is a period of physical healing for my body. It's been ravaged by my treatments, & I believe it now has the blessing of healing (just around the corner).

I've been thinking a lot lately about my Dad. I don't know exactly where this is coming from, but I always enjoy my thoughts of him. He was a rugged man, grew up on a farm, & was kind of self-made. He graduated 8th grade in a small country school. He was first in his class of 3, made up of himself & 2 cousins.  His childhood stories consisted of antics like the time he rode a cow into a barbed wire fence. Not the most brilliant thing he ever did. When he was a young adolescent, he wanted to prove that boys could do things that girls could do, so he cross stitched a robin on a cloth. I now have it framed.

He also had a few sad stories like the time his mother tied him to the kitchen table while she did the farming. I can't go into the details, but it was traumatic. He somehow grew up & became a high school math teacher. He moved & met my mother. She played the piano at the church his landlord attended. Together, they had 3 children; I have 2 big brothers. There weren't many books on parenting back in his day. I really don't know what kind of role models he had in this department. I believe his family had barely the necessities but were hard working.

My dad loved people. He was a servant, & his serving was truly serving (nothing that looked pretty). He did the jobs others wouldn't even consider. His serving received no public recognition, & that was beside the point as far as he was concerned. He was morally a good man, except for his mouth & some of the words that spewed out of it on occasion. As a child, I once made him a detailed list of the words I never wanted to hear come out of his mouth, especially in front of my friends. I told him he would pay me a quarter every time he slipped up. My dad was not a man to be bossed around by his little girl, but for some reason he agreed. I accumulated a lot of quarters, but he got the point & cleaned up his mouth around my little girlfriends.

My dad was a faithful man. He too was hard working. He loved to work in his yard, grow big tomatoes, & water the grass. We camped in the summer & always took long road trips to far off places.  He had a hot temper, but for some reason, he could never bring himself to swat his little girl. He always told me I was special & somehow managed to make me believe it. He tucked me into bed every night with a glass of milk. He checked under my bed regularly to make sure there were no monsters hiding out. He prayed with me every night & assured me that I would not die before I woke, have a bad dream... We went through this ritual for years.

He had a few core beliefs. One of them he repeated often: Do right, be right, & everything will be alright, is all!  For years I believed this motto. In fact, I believed right up until the day he died. And then... I had to question it. This good man, this servant, this faithful husband & loving soul, this once big brawny man who had such zest for life was reduced to a very sickly state. Cancer & its treatments took their toll on his once healthy body. He spent years shaping young lives, protecting the hurting, & serving the elderly. He didn't get everything right, but he did the best he knew. Still... his motto let him down. It served him well most of his life, but in the end, everything wasn't alright. He died too young, & his grandchildren missed out on what would have been one of their deepest joys, one of their anchors in life. He still lives on in me, & I know I have a lot of him in me, & I am so glad he is my Father.