Thoughts of Dad

Today is my dad’s birthday. There are things that I learned from dad that I never appreciated until recently.

Most of my memories of dad are of work related things. Whether it was making a trip to the mountains to cut firewood, or laying sod, or planting trees. There was always some home project that needed to be accomplished. Very rarely were the correct parts available to finish a job, but there was always an abundance of parts that would ‘work’. I don’t know and probably will never know if piecing things together as only dad could do really saved time and effort. It never made much sense to me but he always knew that the convoluted path to get there would work out. Dad never really needed a set of sawhorses; he had kids for that duty. There were many times that I heard “come hold the end of this board while I cut it”.



I’m appreciative of these things now that I have projects of my own and have the skills to be able to build and fix things. I’ve been spending quite a bit of time working on our basement and while I work my thoughts invariably turn to my dad. It’s during those moments that I feel his loss most. My dad was good at just about everything he did and while I do pretty good work, it just doesn’t seem to be as good.

My dad had a funny way of showing us that he loved us. Very rarely did he ever just come out and say it, but we knew anyway. We often heard things like “come look at my dumb kid” and “are you ever going to amount to anything”. I knew that this was dad’s way of showing affection. Because of my dad I’m trying to amount to something.