June 16, 2013

Father's Day

We were visiting my grandparents in rural Georgia; a chicken hawk, having spied potential dinner in my grandmother's flock of free ranging chickens, was circling the sandy yard high above the pines. My dad got out a shotgun and aimed for the predator. I remember crying, asking him not to shoot it, my three year old self not understanding the whole farm life thing. Of course he shot it anyway and in doing so, he fell off the perfect dad pedestal that day. Weird that I remember that part very clearly.

My father and I look alike:


Same dopey smile. Same long face. Same big ears. My sister and brother got the wild curly hair. 
(his picture was taken about the time he took up smoking - age 12)

We also loved to read. I learned to read in kindergarten and was reading Black Beauty in second grade when everyone else was still working out Dick and Jane. If I asked for a book, I usually got it, (except comic books, he thought they were "noneducational"). We would wander the library for hours, picking out sci-fi, Zane Grey Westerns, and books on exploring Africa. Sometimes he and I would be reading the same three or four books at the same time and woe unto me if I lost his place!

We spent most of the years from 1973 - 1992 semi-estranged. You can chalk all those years up to another thing we had in common - stubbornness. 

But cancer, for all its evil, makes an excellent reconciler.

It's been fifteen years since he's been alive for Father's Day. Not surprisingly, he has, in those fifteen years, climbed back up on the perfect dad pedestal.

Happy Father's Day, Dad. Wish you were here.

2 comments:

  1. Precious pictures! You do look so much alike, and it sounds like you were alike in other important, and maybe a few frustrating, ways. I can't imagine reading the same books as my father was reading, at the same time. The whole idea has got my mind whirling around like crazy. Pages lost or no pages lost, what fun! Like being in his head at least part of the time, and who was allowed into Daddy's Brain in those days? I'm sorry about the estrangement. Some parents earn those estrangements, though; I'm not saying he did or didn't, but I'm glad you got to another place with him and that he got his pedestal back. Some parents earn that, too.
    Thank you for this really lovely piece, Kim.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You say the nicest things Andrea. Thank you.

      Delete