Happy Father's Day ~ 2017

I wrote this a few years back. Tonight, the same thing happened. Photes of my Dad surface and sink, I don't know why. Or maybe I do. Maybe for some of us, family photos are better tucked away, to bring out on random occasions when the mood is right.

Without my computer (this week, fingers crossed!), looking for photos isn't going to happen, making this pretty appropriate. Again.

Happy Father's Day to you Father's out there. And to you Mom's that do your best to fill those shoes as well? Bravo!
~~~~~~~~~
Father's Day 2013

My brother called me last night to ask, do you have a photo of Dad? I answered, yeah, but they're in the precious stuff stashed at a friend's house for when I leave here for hurricane season and haven't gathered back for the last 4 or 5 years. Where's YOUR photos of Dad? I asked. He said they were in boxes he'd sent ahead to his eventual retirement and current fun place in North Carolina.

Bottom line, we both have Dad so much in our heads that photos of him, rare and special, aren't really needed on a regular visual basis. He lives in us every day, speaking out loud when we fish and cook and pick up errant trash. When we laugh or start a conversation, when our bullshit detector goes into the red line, when our heart true detector goes into the thumpbumpwatta (is that you Dad? Ok, I'm listening) wumppaapaapaao zone. 

So, here is a photo of my Dad. Somewhere very close between Danny Thomas and Ben Cartwright. And Superman.

My girlfriends who would come to spend the night LOVED my Dad. But they also said, 'Is he in the Mafia? He looks scary, and then you know him and he's not scary at all'. All four of us kids felt the same. He wasn't a tall man, but his piercing eyes under bushy spiked black eyebrows could lay you down in a second for truth. Square hands, hands that knew the silk of a 5th Avenue tie and the handles of a plow and the sweet leather of a classic car and the tiller of a boat and pots and pans.. A back broad as the world, ready to carry us anywhere. And he did. And he didn't. But he wanted to and did the best he could to get us where we wanted to go. We all make our choices. Here's to you, Dad, thank you. Thank you.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Have a salubrious Sunday. Do something sweetly.