Monthly Archives: March 2011

Things; Part 1

Posted by on March 22, 2011 Comments Off on Things; Part 1

Hey Dad,
In my head I keep making lists of things I always want to remember about you. The things that I feel made the world a better place because you were in it. The things I wish I’d told you I loved.

  1. You had an iron stomach when it came to food but the slightest hint of a shopping trip made you sick to your stomach. I remember more than one Christmas where you gave me cash and had me buy my own Christmas gifts so that you didn’t have to go shopping.
  2. You loved old country music and bluegrass; you were super excited to share Flatt and Scruggs with us.
  3. You were almost always home when we got home from school. I know that you really enjoyed the hard work of the farm, but it was amazing to not have to come home to an empty house or a string of baby sitters. (I’m thankful for Mom’s job enabling you to do that too.)
  4. You laughed a lot. You loved to pull practical jokes, like the night you coiled a dead garden snake in the fridge on top of the beer to freak Mom out. It did, and we thought it was the best fun.
  5. You let us girls braid your hair (what there was of it) and beard, and you frequently walked around with barrettes in both.
  6. You liked routine. When I was little, you came in from outside chores to watch The People’s Court with Judge Wapner almost every day. I remember standing on the porch so many nights yelling “Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaddy, it’s Waaaaaaaaaaapner Time” to let you know it was time to come in.
  7. You’d wake us up in the morning in the summertime in the most irritating way you could come up with; by thundering up the stars singing “rise and shine and give god your glory, glory” at the top of your lungs.
  8. You carried your St. Michael’s medal in your wallet every day.
  9. You wore your clothes until they were threadbare. There was one particularly horrendous pair of cut off shorts that would just dangle strings down your legs  and eventually you’d cut the strings off and the shorts got shorter and shorter. You also wore a pair of pants to Wilson’s to get a pizza one night and it wasn’t until you were there that you realized that there was a rip in the seat. Which wouldn’t have mattered so much, except that your bare buttcheek was exposed to all who saw you.
  10. When we went grocery shopping with you after you and Mom split up, we’d frequently pick a “new weird fruit or vegetable” or “cheese we’ve never tried” to go home and try.
  11. You read a lot. You decided after just a couple of classes that college wasn’t for you, but you spent a great deal of time reading and educating yourself on anything that you found interesting that day. I’d like to think that I inherited this from you.
  12. You loved to dye easter eggs and took it very very seriously.
  13. You referred to perfumes and body lotions as “stinkums” and although you never really understood our desire for them, you’d brave places to buy them for us in scents that we told you we liked.
  14. When we were little and we’d go to get grain, you would sometimes let us pick out a treat. A soda or a candy bar and if one of us wasn’t with you, you would make sure that you brought something back as a surprise. I loved the feed store, you always had a list of what you needed and then we just had to wait for it to be brought out. I loved watching you heft the great 100 pound bags as though they weighed barely anything and remember thinking I had the strongest Dad in the whole world.
  15. You loved to tell stories. Growing up, half of your stories started with “I knew this guy–he’s dead/crazy/in jail now…” People loved to listen to you and you were charming and charismatic and people liked to talk to you.

This is an incomplete list, I figure I’ll just come back and add onto it as I think of things. You weren’t perfect Dad, but you were a lot of really great things and I love you and miss you so much.

Food and Memories

Posted by on March 16, 2011 Comments Off on Food and Memories

Dad, I have so many memories of you that are connected to foods. I bought a pork roast at the butcher the other day and brought it home and divided it into pieces, wrapping each piece in its own freezer paper coating. You would have yelled at me for wasting freezer paper and boggled over the fact that I had no masking tape. You’d have approved of my labeling though; pork shoulder, the weight and the date I was putting it in the freezer. You were such a stickler for that.

Right now I can’t bring myself to eat pancakes. You made pancakes for lunch for us so many times when we were children, in the same cast iron skillet with the same griddlecakes recipe. We used it so often that I’d copied it out onto a piece of paper and stuck it to the side of the fridge. And I spelled sugar wrong, with an e. And on the back of that piece of paper was a horrible sharpie bird that I had drawn. My favorite part was when you’d make a giant pancake for yourself with the last of the batter and dub it The Pancake that Ate Chicago. Or New York. Or maybe we called it that and you just humored us.

Today I took sausages from the butcher and squished them out of their casings. They were sweet italian sausages, one of the kinds you seemed to favor when I was a kid, all full of fennel and deliciousness. The feeling of the casing in my hand reminded me of standing next to you at the kitchen-aid, slowly feeding spiced ground pork into the slippery and damp natural casings. As squeamish as I was, natural casings have never bothered me, perhaps because of their distinct lack of blood or gook. Sometimes now we eat at restaurants and I lament the fact that you’ll never get to try them, indeed that you won’t ever spend time with me in Eugene now that I’ve lived here long enough to know where to take you for a great burrito like you wanted.

Love

Posted by on March 2, 2011 Comments Off on Love

My father passed away unexpectedly on January 28, 2011. I keep writing him letters and blog posts in my head. It seemed like the only way to keep them from bouncing around there would be to write them down. That’s what this blog is for. To help me get through this and to help me remember.

You almost never answered my phone calls without a joke.

“Hey Dad, it’s me” I’d say, knowing you’d recognize my voice.
“Me who?”
“It’s Bonnie, Dad.”
“No, I’m Dad.”

“Dad!” At this point I’d huff and we’d be able to begin our conversation. Sometimes you made me clarify that I was your daughter, and not just your daughter, but your middle daughter. Even if the words were sometimes different, the pattern was always the same. Sometimes I’d answer your question with “your daughter” and you’d follow that with “which one?” You always knew it was me, but it didn’t matter. Life was just a little more fun for you if you could yank my chain a bit.

When the girls and I were kids, you reveled in tormenting us in little ways. You’d come down from the shower with your beard still wet–your beard was epic in the 1980s Dad, garnering comparisons to Grizzly Adams and Jerry Garcia–and stand over us and shake your head, sprinkling cold droplets on us while we shrieked. You’d drink a glass of milk and then perform your disgusting dribbling spit trick. You’d take off your stinky, horrible, sweaty socks at the end of a day out working in the field and throw them at us, hoping we’d be forced to take a big whiff of them. One night, when I struggled to stay awake, you took a magic marker and wrote “I am not asleep” in your neat block letters across the bottom of my foot. I didn’t wake up while you were doing it and you felt triumphant that you’d proved your point.

As exasperating as you could be, you teased us because it was one of the ways you told us you loved us. You weren’t a man who spent a lot of time with his heart on his sleeve; I can only remember you crying 2 or 3 times in my entire life. Sometimes you had no idea what to do with me, your super emotional middle child. But I’ve always known how much you loved me, how much you loved all three of us, and how thrilled you were that you were our Dad. I’ve never, not once, doubted how much you wanted us girls, how proud you were. Our relationship wasn’t perfect, but I love you with a fierceness and in a way I know I’ll never love anyone else. Because you are my not just my father, you’re my Dad, and no one will ever fill this gap in my heart. I miss you.