quintessentially my father

First, let me send out a sort of disclaimer. Some blogs have very clear target audiences. For example, If you want to read about couponing, this is not your blog. I spend way too much money buying really awesome food at Fresh Market, and I do not feel one ounce bad about it. Second, some blogs are more like twitter posts than personal essays. If you want to know what I ate for dinner last night, you won’t read it in my blog unless I am discussing hoeing, sowing or harvesting from my garden.

I think of my blog page as my professional portfolio. Full of Individual vignettes, reasonably well-written (we can only hope), about what moves me on any given day. I share experiences that have changed me in some way, or at least given me pause. Some of the moments I share are beautiful ones where I did something right, and others are extremely ugly moments where I seriously failed myself or the people I love. I put it all in there. Unless my husband edits it out. More on this in a future post.

Yes, I want an agent to find my blog page,  read It, and love it. So share it. Send it to your coworkers, your girlfriends, your neighbors. One of them might be an agent, or know an agent. Or a publisher. These are hopeful magazine articles, future chapters in my next book, and (admittedly) ramblings of a thirty-something woman who finds solace and inspiration from the act of writing.

Today I am going to share with you an essay featuring my father. He is my lifeline when I do not know who else to turn to, or when I feel too crazy and nuts to share my worries with anyone else. He listens when I need him to listen and he is brutally honest when I need that as well. He is flawed, but lovely. He is my hero. Enjoy the post, and may God bless all parents.

quintessentially my father

When I was fifteen, my parents decided to divorce. We had a yard sale.

Everything other than some necessities was sold: every Barbie I had ever played with, baby toys from deep in the attic, board games galore. In some way I think of it as my childhood having been sold. Twenty years later, my father has decided to move from his retirement state of Montana to my beautiful state of Georgia, in order to be closer to family. He is packing up his entire life on a small U-Haul trailer and moving into a place one mile from my home. Anything not deemed worthy to make the trip will be sold in a small-town auction next month, meaning that everything from my childhood that is quintessentially my father has a pretty good chance of winding up in a cardboard box being sold in a batch designated “man stuff”, for less than ten dollars.

Now, my dad is a collector. Of books mostly, but he also has many small knickknacks from various interests during his life. For example, he currently owns twelve different wrist watches. One is his father’s watch, having sentimental value. Another one he simply liked the blue color of the face, and added it to the pile. He changes which watch he wears on a daily basis, in the same way a woman changes her earrings. He hopes to add a deep sea diving watch to his collection, for no reason other than deep sea diving might be on his bucket list. I love this about him.

Back in his twenties my father was a navy man. He has saved several memorabilia from those fondly remembered years to include navy figurines, photos of ships, and various trinkets. He also collects things that move him. Some are garage sale finds that simply spoke to him, such as an old fashioned scale resembling his astrological sign Scorpio, or a statue of The Thinking Man that sat in his den for my entire childhood. These items are still in a box in his garage in Montana, from his move there ten years ago. The box is labeled “Dad’s Small Stuff”. These are the things that were not allowed to be on display in my childhood living room, but were allocated to his den, the bar, the garage. I can relate to this, as my husband’s Green Bay Packer stuff and bar paraphernalia is allowed shelf space in our guest room, but not in our living room. It is no wonder that men have man caves.

Thinking over this big life-changing move that my father is making is complex. My left brain books a one-way flight to Montana to help him drive the U-Haul. It calls the babysitter and sets up childcare seven weeks in advance. My right brain has a harder time with things. I am overjoyed at the prospect of having my father so close to us. I am picturing family dinners on Sundays, with Papa Roger in regular attendance. I envision him at the boys’ swim meets and I can picture him surprising my daughter at school for a lunch date. My right brain also has the ability to gallop off to a scary place where one day he won’t be here. Will not be on this earth. See, one day I will lose my dad.

One day I will only have memories and a few of those little knickknacks to remember a great man. A great life. One we shared. So now I see some value to all of that stuff that was only allocated to the den or basement. I feel sentimental about the prospect of him packing up his life. My husband, Brandon, understands. If his own father, heaven-forbid, left us suddenly or simply downsized to a condo for some retirement living, Brandon would be on the first flight to Wisconsin in order to make sure that the contents of his father’s tool shed and garage were not yard-saled away into oblivion. I need to do the same. I need to talk with him about those mementos and the memories they represent. One day they will be all that I have to remind me of the complex, complete man that is my father.

 I do not need a lot of material things, just a few special ones. It would be wonderful if some of the items were able to serve a function here, some book ends maybe.  I am also fine with them only serving as a spark for a dear memory, though: a votive holder from his old desk, or maybe a navy print of the ship he sailed on to show where his love of the ocean began. My boys are magnetically drawn to the ocean, to the endless horizon it offers each morning, maybe they got that love passed down a couple generations from my father. Maybe they will one day set sail themselves.  

So, today I will hunt down a few thousand frequent flyer miles, book a trip out to Montana, and reminisce a bit with my father. I can share with him a few of these memories while he is still around to hear them. He can gift those small items to me rather than some estate person doing the same after the business end of his life is taken care of. I’ll enjoy this more. Less bittersweet and more simplysweet.

So, Dad…get ready for some good times. A few tears, maybe, while we pour through your old stuff, but also an excitement as we prepare you for your next step in this life: where Georgia is your home, Montana is your past and Wisconsin is your vacation destination.

Dedicated to my father, who may inspire my bestseller one day.