My Dear Daddy

I love my Dad.

  Look at him here with his sweet smile, clean shaven face and beautiful eyes.  He always looks well put together and even noble somehow. He often gets eclipsed by my Mom who is the more gregarious, talkative, life loving half of their marriage, but Dad has been a steadfast presence in our home these many years.  As many years as I've been alive.  

I wanted to make his day special so I prepared a BBQ with steak, special baked potatoes and a strawberry mixed salad.  

But sadly, the steak (top sirloin from Australia) tasted really odd.  

And it was so chewy. Embarrassingly so.  

I fed mine to the dogs.  

Only Mom sat determinedly cutting and chewing, declaring that it was good!

She's the only one who ate her steak, with her 88 year old teeth.

She's a trooper.

And since I didn't have my sous chef Patrice working alongside me I ended up overdoing the "scored - baked potatoes" that looked really amazing in the recipe's picture.  

At least Elsie and Patrice liked them, but still.  

Pretty chewy.  

Thankfully the brownies were delicious.  I took them out of the freezer and sprinkled icing sugar on them so they were almost the best looking and tasting part of the entire meal.

Next to the watermelon, that is.  

Look at that WATERMELON Dad is clutching!  This is his ministry to our family gatherings and I just love it.  He said this doozer was the smallest he could find and he didn't even want to hold it for the picture because it was so heavy.  But I just love that he keeps bringing these big melons to our feasts.  

Tradition.  

Anyways, this isn't so much about the meal which was a huge disappointment to me and probably to Dad who rarely gets a good BBQ anymore because they live in a condo. 

This is about my Dad.

He is truly a remarkable man and I'm so proud to call him "Dad". 

As I sat writing his card, I began to thank him for some of the things that came to my mind that He had done for me that made my childhood GREAT.

The trips to Fairmount in the winter where we got to run outside into the wintery snow and lower ourselves into the lovely hot springs.  The camaraderie between lots of long time family friends at those gatherings was fabulous. 

He bought the family cross country skis and on the way home we stopped and all skied together under those tall evergreens in the still winter snow.

What an unusual and amazing thing for us to do together.

I thanked him for the camper he bought for the family. We didn't own it for long and as I recall it was a bit of a pain to drag up into the mountains, but it made an impression on me.  The fun of having a little house sitting on on the driveway for me to have sleepover parties in with my friends was thrilling.

The only camping trip I can ever remember taking it on was to Fairmount Hot Springs in the summer.  We brought our dog Nippy who grew so frantic the one time we left her in there that she ripped the screens out of the windows.

I thanked him for allowing us to  have pets.

He truly started a tradition with little Nippy and to this day dogs continue to play a rather large part in our family life.   Perhaps disproportionately so, but they make us laugh.  A lot.  

So thank you very much, Daddy. 

I thanked him for getting me downhill skis and for giving me the opportunity to learn to ski.  

I remember going to a sports store in Calgary where he let me pick out a beautiful sky blue snow suit and blue skis.  

It all felt so extravagant and amazing.

Being the youngest, I know I got the bells and whistles because there was finally enough money to allow such liberal spending.

And I got ski lessons at Paskapoo.

I thanked Dad for building me barbie doll furniture. Oh those beautiful beds he built for my "old fashioned" barbie stories.  He also built a table and chairs for them.  I went along to one of his jobs - a house that was under construction - and I watched these little masterpieces come together. 

They were sturdy and beautiful.  I left them unpainted because the barbie Clair and her husband  Joshua (a GI-Joe) were pioneers.  They had many many children together so Dad made sure to build me enough little beds.  Then I sewed tiny little quilts on Mom's sewing machine to finish that old fashioned look.  

I said thanks for the incredible trips he took our family on.  Back in the day not everyone was flying around as much as they do now, but Dad made family vacations a priority.  

I am so very grateful for those memories. 

We stayed right on Waikiki Beach in Oahu Hawaii back in 1969 or so. 

There was a big fat Hawaiian lifeguard named Jake that we hung out with around the pool.  There were pineapples and parrots and palm trees.

We went to Disneyland and Mazatlan, Europe and then back to Hawaii when I was 16.  My sister always at my side, looking after me, and beautiful mom and dad. 

Strong and steady and always there. 

Loving each other and loving us. 

They loved each other well and made our home feel safe for me.

Dad sitting in his office at his very neat and tidy desk.

Keeping careful record and making sure there was always enough.

Dad laying on the green striped couch in the family room watching TV or reading the newspaper. Such a familiar peaceful sight.  

I thanked Dad for carrying me to bed at night.  We had this game where I would close my eyes and as he carried me he would take a new route to my room so that I would be surprised when he finally laid me down in my bed.  

Sometimes he would lay down beside me and tell me stories. 

He was an excellent story teller and he told of his adventures in the war as he lay beside me.  How he and his companions managed to escape from prison camp.  He just made it all sound so fantastic that it didn't strike me that it must have been a terrifying, incredibly difficult time in his life.  

He left all of those parts out.

He left out the part that he suffered a very difficult and painful childhood, but still somehow managed to become a loving and caring Father.

He is truly a remarkable man.

He has left us with his memoirs written in a hardcover book.  Events Unforseen. What an incredible gift.  I have recently been re-reading this memoir and I am utterly amazed at how beautifully he wrote using a language he learned in his 20's. I am so grateful to have this written record of his life and some of mom's life.  

I know now where I got this love of "keeping the story" alive.

I've got that part of Dad running through my veins and right into this keyboard.  

His legacy lives on.

I'm so grateful to this man of diligence and hard work.

I'm grateful for his faithfulness to his wife and family.

I'm dumbfounded when I think of how generous and kind he has been to all of us, all of our years. 

He paid for my education and gave me a work ethic that allowed me to do very well in college and to graduate with distinction.

He provided bikes and later cars for us to drive and houses for us kids to live in.

He truly loves his family very well.

I see this is getting a little lengthy and I didn't know I'd wax all eloquent but Dad is worthy of so much more than one blog post here.  

I'm grateful to God for giving me this exceptional, loving, kind, generous, hardworking and faithful Father.  

I need to read this to him because his card didn't quite say what I really meant to say to him. 

This and a whole lot more.

I'm So Very Grateful.