Memories of my Dad

Thinking of my dad today. It's been 29 years  since he took flight from this life. What do I remember most about my dad? “Good golly day in the mornin’!!” I’m sure that was in place of some other  more colourful expletive. Ice tea! I still have one of the long handled spoons for his ice tea when he came in from the field. Then there was when he laid a new floor in the dining room - put a plywood subfloor down first; I watched him measure and draw the squared lines across the entire floor for placement of tiles. He showed me, and my siblings, the fields, the birds, and thunder storms. Those memories barely scratch the surface of my memories of my dad. I know my brothers and sisters have many more. Was he perfect? Of course not, but it was that part of him that stopped the tractor to move a killdeers nest, that part of him that explained thunderstorms and weather, that gave me a big, warm hug when I did well at my piano recital, showing a softer side of my dad. A good, hard working man with a gentle heart.

“We can’t always do what we want in life,” 

answered her father,“so we do the best we can.”

~ Beverly Cleary, Ramona Forever