How many are there left? I can't remember the last one I spent with my father. Some day, my daughters won't remember the last one they spent with me. A card, a phone call, an "I love you," seems so routine, but in the grand scheme of life and death, they are my treasure.
There is so much I would change if I could go back in time, back when I was all they knew and every step they took into the their new world was followed closely by the steps of their Dad. I can hear them calling up the stairs, I can see them riding their bikes up the driveway, I can still feel their tears, their fears, their joys, their wins and their losses up that ladder of growth and discovery. I was there.
Now it has come to distances and those cards, phone calls and, "I love you, Dad." We take what we can get in this world. I suppose there are some kids and Dads that don't or can't even get that.
Still, that one frozen moment in time, that one Fathers Day when we were living at the beach in South Carolina and the four of us, our family, took Dad out for dinner and bought him a blue T-shirt with a bike on the front; it was the best day of my life.
D
1 comment:
Nothing remains the same, Allan. Lives move on with or without our will. It is not what happens to us, it is how we react that makes us who we are.
I read these essays of yours as though we are friends, drinking scotch and rambling on through the night, lamenting about what has become of us. What a waste of a good night, to wander lost in the past. It is not there.
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