Remember how I was saying that The Girl was being the sweetest, most wonderful, atypical 3 ½ year old you’ve ever known? Yeah, I jinxed it. If it were possible, and legal, to punt my daughter, man she would have been sailing into the next county by now. I can usually blame these lapses of judgment of hers on lack of sleep or not feeling well. But she slept great last night (even slept in!) and she’s totally healthy. If I’m being fair, she’s just responding to the up and down nature of the emotional state of affairs right now. If I’m being as big of a brat as she is, she’s being a gigantic pain in my ass and I’d like for her to just stop it.
My mom, dad and I were up until almost 11:30pm last night listening to dad tell stories like only he can. Watching him remember days far gone in rural Nebraska and missing his own father more than ever, now that he is facing his own mortality. I think he’d really like to have his dad here to tell him it’s ok. That none of this is his fault and life is just life. It breaks my heart to see how much my father still adores and looks to his own father after all of these years. My grandfather died of a massive heart attack about a week after my mom and dad got married. So I never got to meet him and my parents never got a honeymoon. But I don’t think there has been a day gone by over the last almost 40 years that my dad hasn’t missed his own father.
I expect I’m going to get to know that feeling pretty intimately in the near future.
So I am going to give him a journal for his upcoming birthday. So that as these winding tales from his childhood surface to the top of his memory he can write them down. And later, I can weave all the threads together into a story. So we can all make sure that these glorious memories of times, and people, long past go on being remembered and loved.
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