cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog
Sorry I missed your birthday yesterday, Dad. I did get my calendar reminder, and woah, you’d be 87. Twenty years ago you were in Phoenix to climb Camelback Mountain for a special day. And the last one we celebrated together for your 75th is bittersweet with sadness and foreboding.
Our birthdays less than a week apart, we shared our Taurus signs, for all the foofah that is astrology. but we shared that.
I find myself relishing the time working in my yard, landscaping and nurturing the land, just like that guy i remember dutifully cutting the grass and trimming those monstrous forsythia bushes. And trying to get that dogwood tree to thrive.
It feels familiar.
I remember noticing at social events you tended more to listen than talk.
It feels familiar.
With much fondness I remember how much you enjoyed devouring those steamed crabs during our summers at Ocean City. You would have enjoyed that tasty Black Pepper crab I ate in Singapore. Those folks were kind of lightweights at this! You are supposed to go at it for hours.
cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog
It feels familiar.
Then again, I am not regular about washing my truck- you did your car weekly! I am at a frequency measured in months or years. But like your little notebook of numbers, I find myself keeping track (spreadsheet) of maintenance even keeping track of miles per gallon (though in an app on my phone).
It feels familiar.
I’m thinking of that road trip we did in 1988 when you came out to visit me in Arizona. It was that switch from the old days when you planned our summer vacations.
cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog
I’m heading to the Grand Canyon in june to do a hike rim to rim, not anything we did together, but I’m thinking how much you’d enjoy reading about it and seeing the photos.
It should feel familiar.
It gets hard to fathom you’ve been gone for 12 years. I want to hold all that is familiar in my heart.
Thinking of you “Old Man”
(and the reply would have been, “And I am thinking of you, Junior”)
You always make me cry when you write like this. Almost 23 years since I lost my mom. My kids will never meet her. Still hurts.
Thanks Darren, means a lot coming from you. We can only keep them alive be keep telling the stories.
Alan, you really love your Mum and Dad. I wish I had been an overseas exchange student living with your family 30 years or so back. Knocking around with you and your family would be so special. Brings a lump to my throat and a tear to my eye.
Thanks John, that’s an interesting alternate universe to ponder.
We were actually pretty boring. That’s what I love about my family life.
You make me cry, too. Beautiful.
So many memories in those pictures of dad! He did love those crabs! I too think of him every weekend when I take my weeder and pull out the dreaded dandelions! I pull it out of the ground and say, “this one is for you, dad!’ Not a day goes by that I don’t think of him and mom and miss them. Thanks for your beautiful words!
Love those pictures–especially the one from my backyard on Murdock rd. Great memories…I still feel guilty when I go to the car wash instead of hand washing my car!