Friday, March 19, 2010

Happy Birthday, Dad


(I can't find the other picture that I like a little bit better than this one, so this picture will have to do. I'll save the other one for another day.)
Today is Dad's birthday. I wish I could see him "hopping" around the way he used to. Dad's birthday was the official start of springtime for me. I hope it turns out to be a beautiful, sunny day, the kind of day he would walked around in the back yard and just "tinker". When I think of Dad I always think of "tinker." He was the greatest tinker-er, always finding little things to do, always looking for something to keep him busy. I don't remember him sitting down and watching TV very much, or just sitting. He was always reading, drawing up some plans, looking through a magazine, or something. He could find pleasure out of pulling weeds, fixing Christmas lights, (ok, not pleasure, but busy-ness). There are so many other thoughts going through my mind right now, but this is just took difficult, so.....maybe next year.
Happy birthday, Dad!

4 comments:

mom o said...

I'm proud of you writing about your Dad. It is always that first of anything that is the most difficult. I'm looking forward to next year on his birthday. It should be a couple pages long.
Love you

nancy said...

Very well put mom. Hope you are doing ok today. Love you...

Nicky said...

and i can just hear him say "oh my stars they remember it's my birthday!"

Wendy said...

Debated on where to leave this comment . . . your blog won out! I wanted to share a funny little memory I have of your dad.

How many people out there can actually remember who their Driver's Ed teacher is? Lucky for us around our age group, it was your dad! I remember finishing up the driver's training right around my birthday. It seemed like EVERYONE had a birthday before me and I was one of the last to get a driver's license.

The last day I was driving, we (me and someone else were driving together that day) stopped at the rest area between Castle Dale and Ferron (near the Orangeville turnoff?). Your dad filled out the paperwork on the little piece of paper and signed off on it that I had completed all the requirements and passed everything satisfactorily. Then he folded that paper twice. I was in the driver's seat ready to drive back to Ferron. As I was exiting the rest area, I came to a complete stop . . . just past the stop sign! With that, you dad shook his head and said, "Wendy, I just signed off on this! I'm going to have to do something." With that, he tore off a small corner of that folded paper and said he was sure that I would remember to stop in FRONT of the stop sign instead of past it! :o)

I'm sure the DMV office wondered why my paper had this little tear in it! And who knew that it would be YOUR dad that would help prepare me for navigating the freeways in southern California all these years later!