Fathers’ Day Part I

Happy Fathers’ Day to all the fathers out there! 🙂

I have a really great dad. I was adopted when I was 6 years old. My dad was too old to adopt a baby under the strict adoption laws in Missouri. He could have had any of the older children, but out of them all he picked me (I was 3, the legal system moved VERY SLOW in my case). That fact in itself demands a certain loyalty on my part – he rescued me from a very uncertain and lonely future (no one wants the older children). The first thing we did when the adoption was final and I truly belonged to him was to go to Disney World in Florida. We drove down there in his big green Buick stopping at motels on the way, where he taught me to swim in the pools. The sand hurt my feet and he picked me up and carried me across the beaches. He taught me how to make a paper bag kite, and we flew it in this huge windstorm. It was a whole new life for me. We were pretty much inseparable as I grew up – an unbeatable team. He taught me a lot. No home improvement project was safe from the two of us. I learned plumbing and wiring and landscaping and so on. When it was time for me to learn to drive, he bought me a beat up Audi Fox for $200. I had to get it running and road worthy first. I learned to work on the engine and do body work. I also learned that there is nothing you can’t do if you’ve got a library nearby. When it was sweet, he taught me to drive it; it was a stick and to pass HIS test I had to be able to start from the steepest hill in town and not roll back more than 6 inches. Then, I was able to get my license. He promptly sold the car for $600 and told me I could get a job to buy my own car. It wasn’t all work though – he didn’t miss a Girl Scout camping trip. We would go canoeing together every summer. He would come up with crazy ideas for parties; he loved to roast whole animals in the back yard. My dad built all of the kids in the neighborhood stilts (thus endearing him to all of the other parents – NOT) and we spent the summer trying to knock each other off of them. Another summer he built us go-carts (again disturbing the other parents). He used to wake me up at 0500 on Saturday mornings and we would drive all of the way to the riverfront in St Louis to eat breakfast on the deck of the McDonald’s barge. Once a week we would drive to Illinois to buy 1 lottery ticket (this was before MO got a lottery of its own). We would pick our numbers off road signs and license plates as we went. All week long, we would tell everyone not to bother buying one as we had the winning ticket; we would plot what we would do with the money. We never even came close to winning, but it was worth the dollar every week for all of the fun we had. No matter where we went on vacation, we always stopped at the Air Force museum in Ohio – I don’t know why, Dad was in the Army. He did discipline me, too. I can count the number of times he had to lay a hand on me on one hand, and I deserved every one of them; I am a better person today for it. We turned out to be a pretty good match. I am only about ½ to an inch taller than he is and my eyes are blue, just like his – people tell him all of the time that they can see the resemblance (he gets a real kick out of that). He’s been a great grandpa, too. In spite of the distance, he’s bonded with my daughter very closely. He loves her so much and would do anything for her. I am so grateful for that. He could never replace her father, but if anything ever happened to the two of us, it’s good to know that there is someone in the world for her.