Father's Day

"It doesn't matter who my father was . . .

it matters who I remember he was."

Anne Sexton

My Father has been gone 34 years, and I think of him as if it were yesterday.  A day when he came home from work and tousled my hair and said, "Hi Dolly!"  Or when he became disabled, at age 59, after a severe heart attack and picked me up at school or played "500 Rummy" with me at the kitchen table.

Of course, there were the fights with my Mother, which caused me to retreat to my room and cover my ears. Then, there were  the bitter battles with his own demons, emotions I didn't understand then & may be just starting to now, at least a little better, 50 years later.  Demons many of us struggle with:  anxiety, depression, conflicts with life choices and decisions.  After all, he waited until he was 40 to get married and was almost 50 when he sired me.

There were the Sunday dinners, after church, in he dining room with spaghetti and meatballs, the afternoon sports shows on TV and the long drives.  Like a day trip to Cleveland or Sunday drive to Put-in-Bay (about 200 miles).  Of course, I frequently got car-sick as I couldn't stomach long drive and that was my child hood way of showing my dislike.  And, showed it I did!

When I went to UCLA, Dad drove halfway across the country to bring me my little Royal Typewriter and 1966 Pontiac Tempest.  But, it died in a farmer's field, in Kansas, so Dad got on a Greyhound Bus and traveled the rest of the 2500 mile journey to deliver my typewriter.  And when he died, he had no will or money to speak of but left all he had, $2000, to his youngest daughter, me.

Dad, although you're not here in the physical world today, you are and will always be here in spirit and forever in my mind and heart. 

Happy Father's Day!
 Father's Day-- also the 100th anniversary of the first Father's Day celebration, which was organized by a woman named Sonora Smart Dodd, who thought up the holiday while listening to a Mother's Day sermon at her Methodist Episcopal Church in Spokane, Washington.