I saw a cloud in the sky that looked like Dad's thumb.

It made me think that Dad would've been proud of how we treated Ben, this Father's day. I felt like he was saying its about time you started treating your husband well. Do you have to wait 412 months to start catering to him? If it wasn't Dad, it was definitely God reminding me of my vows to love, honor and obey?:) Its fun these days being a couple. No real babies in arms. We can clear a room in a second just by kissing eachother. I think I'll keep him!
Years ago, Father's day was running from pillar to post honoring the fathers here and there and I think it took us all these three years to realize that the real Papa now in our lives is him. He's got a wrestling match on, with the 2 older girls being women and one of the boys being eye to eye with him. It would be too much, if Enoch had the personality of the girls. He is a gentle soul, for the most part. Fathering and mothering is feeling like building a community now. Individuals living together with separate interests and activities and lives, under the authority of a gracious man of God.

Miriam Makeba was one of Dad's favorites

It said in the news that she died recently, at 76 years old. It always amazes me how those people were able to sing amidst the civil riots and obvious degradation that people spoke of them in the 60's. Her voice to me brings back memories of a hope that one day we would see an African American President. Beyond imagination in those days. Just give us the right to vote and to eat in the ice cream parlors in the south and such things like that. Appartheid's voice heard here and there were beautiful and there is little sound more beautiful to me than the voice of a song in the night season. She was that voice in South Africa and America. The Grace of God allows for peace in the heart which can sing even in the sadness of inequality and injustice. Love of country and love of peace can bring hope above the sad situations which we may live in at any one time or another. There is much to rejoice in, in that our foreparents such as Miriam Makeba lived to see the turn around of appartheid in South Africa and political oppressions in the US.
Perhaps her music was a part of the change. "Faith, Hope, Love, these three, but the greatest of these is..."

If I could Kiss my Daddy.

If I could have just one more minute to feel his warm cheek,
If I could have just one more minute to see my Daddy smile,
I would wait, I would drink it in, I would listen to him make
the point. I wouldn't try to finish his sentence. No matter how-----
long it took.
I would listen---
I would look at him---
I would keep my lips right there on his cheek---
I would wait that one more second and try to hang onto it---
These are the connections that make the hope of heaven so precious---
I told my sassy Senior this morning.
"Don't cry like I am this morning!"
"Go and kiss your Daddy!" Don't take this time for granted,
You don't get another chance to feel this sweetness.

Dad said...

Uncle Pat had lockjaw one time. He described to me in detail how Uncle could only open his mouth a very little bit, when he had it. Those two were very emotionally attached.
Because Dad's dad wasn't around Dad watched Uncle's every move. I said Dad, how come Uncle Pat looks younger than you do? He said, because he doesn't have children. Dad was Uncle's child. We don't know as much about Dad as Dad did about Uncle Pat. Man to man.

Mr. Tony stories

Yesterday, I told Ezra a Mr. Tony story. The story of Papa as a young man. The man that I knew was 23 when I was born and a very fast runner. He didn't have to whistle for us because he could chase us. The whistle developed as the legs grew slower.
One day I saw a boy pull the fire alarm on the corner across the street from the Polinese's,(our neighbors). Papa's feet came bounding down the steps from his shower, still somewhat damp and fully dressed. Out the door he bounded and caught that boy and held him there, a teenager, until the firemen came to take it from there. He was a hero on the block and a protector of his little pea patch of chilluns (us). I still remember the sound of my father's feet like tiptoes, lightly running past me and the wind that I felt from his fast body running past me.
Mr. Tony, said William, can I take Jayne on a date? Dad just looked at him and went inside to get the gun. Never again, did anybody on the block, even ask that question.

Well, I'm here Dad!

Everytime I had a baby, my Dad would ask me "How old are you?" and whatever age I was at the moment, he would count on his fingers and each finger was a year and he would stop and look at me intently and say. That is how many years it will be before you can be any help to "Benny". He was not trying to be comforting, but a realist. He had been down this road; and he didn't say as I often do, "My condolences!" (Not a biblical sentiment, by any means, but a real one) He was being a financial planner and an emotional planner and a life coach. That, he would always conclude, was not a wise decision. Even though it was in his footsteps somewhat. Not wise.
The mentality of the world is that life begins after the kid goes to kindergarten. You get to be a woman. You get to live your life. You get to be. Wrong answer, according to grace, with or without means.
Children are life-giving and life-strengthening, even though harrowing.
I got on this rollercoaster ride of child-bearing and child-rearing, to give God the glory, not for my own comfort. Each decision to ride out the waves of discouragement, by His grace may not be wise, in the world's eyes, but each treasure in Heaven's toolbox and moment of disgrace at not having the means to do what we're doing is only for God's glory and not for man's credit at all.
The first day of Kindergarten for my baby is the day that my Dad planned for all my married life. I thought maybe, I'll take him out to the park across the street from Mary-Immaculate or we'll get a bag of M&M's, in the lobby to mark the day.
He's not here now to do that with. No more babies!
We'll get together then...

Papa's 69th Birthday!

So many birthdays we got together to celebrate Dad's birthday. It is a family holiday. Celebration of the life that started us all as a huge family. I remember a day that we were celebrating and Grandma Monica came over and brought a large bag of Bazooka Bubblegum. After she left, Dad took the bag and threw it in the trash (to save our teeth). I looked him in the eye and said what would you do if your grandmother gave you a bag of bubblegum and somebody threw it in the trash. His eyes filled with tears and he went and took the bag out of the garbage and started to tell me the stories about Ma. He loved her very much and had forgotten how it felt to be loved with real sugar (that could decay your teeth).
Ma was Dad's great-grandmother and she had passed when he was about 12. Love means telling my kids to brush their teeth after the candy. Love also means throwing the bag of bubblegum in the trash, if it is excessive. I am still learning from him 14 cavities later :(.

My father loved to watch me

play tennis. But he knew that he made me so nervous and that my mistakes made him cuss so loudly that he couldn't keep his cool. He found every hiding place in the mountains at Rochdale and in the trees at Cunningham and in the handball courts at Baisley to watch me, when I had a big match to play.
He would give me pointers when I got off the court about this or that point and I would say, How did you see that point, I didn't see you? He said, I have my ways.
If he saw me see him then he would move because he was sure that I would blame him for my loss or he would blame himself.
My favorite memory is when we walked the Motor Highway, He was way faster than me and always trying to provoke me to go past my walls. It was shady and alot of brush to the left and right. I would have stopped 10 or 20 times to rest and look at the wildlife, if I weren't with him. He just kept saying, come on, come on. I said Dad, I want to be just like you! He hated that. I loved it and now when I get tired of being just like him, I hear him saying, come on, come on. I know that God gave him to me so that I could hear that.

Don't plant flowers...

Dad said and then ask me to eat my corn. I hear him say that to me everytime I look at my butterfly bush. The one bush that I planted in the front yard that has survived the drought. My butterflies visit me everyday, but you can't eat butterflies...unless your animators bring in the bacon which mine are aiming to do.
Seeds have to grow and bloom to get to be fruitful, whether they are butterflies or roses or animators. My beautiful dreamers are honing their skills.

My Dad said...

Papa said there'd be days like this... Hot sun, buckets of balls hit against unmotivated fledgelings, This is living! "I said, Ready position, racquet back... okay" I sound so much like him, I turn around and look for him behind me...
I guess we do always carry our parents with us.
The leader of the band, only my band are naturalists and artists, as I force them to include some physical fitness into their ordinarily Bohemian artistic pursuits, I feel like a bull in the china shop of their dreams.
Mom, I'm not trying to be a tennis player...Okay, I didn't ask you to give up art to pick up a tennis raquet, just for an hour or two to develop the skills. Force feeding...

Dad's recorder!

There is something to be said for consistency, this Father's Day. Uncle Pat is gone and he was the preserver of the stuff of Grandma and Auntie. I am remembering the very touching tears my father cried when Auntie died. Not because he missed her so much. Not because she was gone, she had lived a long long life and we did miss her, but he broke into sobs when Uncle Pat uncovered a recorder with a taped piece of paper that said Tony on it. It came out of her drawer. We couldn't console him. We couldn't understand why.
When he got himself together, he told us the story of Auntie. He was 4 years old, or so he said. He was given a recorder and used it to squeal. Auntie promised him, "Boy, if you squeal in my ear one more time, the next time you see that recorder will be after I am gone." She lived into her 90's, late 90's. He sobbed, and I think he learned the lesson.
Tough love is love learned over seasons of life, at sunrises and at sunsets. Auntie was not his mother, but she was an example of real consistency.
What was that lesson?
God is compassionate. We are capricious.