Riesling-free post this morning!
Thank you all for your support and caring. I've tried to respond to each individually but fingers get locked up with emotions. Then I decide I should take another nap.
I promise I will be back soon and try to catch up on everyone's posts. In the meantime, I thought I would share a post about Dad from 2008, simply entitled
My Dad.
"My dad, Tom, is one of the funniest men I know, not counting my sons, John and Adam.
Dad's
sayings started off pretty low key when I was really young. I am the
oldest of three, but whenever he was asked how many kids he had, Dad
would always answer, "4! There's Toni, Michael, Sherree and Nahme!"
He
shared with every one what a scamp his fourth child was. "Every time I
ask the kids who was responsible for mischief around the house the
answer is always,"Nah ME!" When I see that child, he is going to be in a
heap of trouble!"
There were all the usual sayings,
"Because I'm the Dad, that's why!" and "If Bobby jumped off a bridge
would you jump to?" "Don't make me come in there!" but he had some
pretty original stuff too. You've heard the expressions, "You can take a
horse to water but you can't make him drink" and "Buy them books and
buy them books and all they do is read the covers"? Well, Dad has his
own twist to them.
He
can often be heard exclaiming, "You can take a horse to water but all
he does is chew the covers." or "Buy them books and buy them books but
all they do is drink the water!" or "You can lead a horse to water but
all he does is read the books." And variations there of!
When
I was 14, Dad and Mom purchased a brand new station wagon, beautiful
light blue, dark blue two-tone. When our shiny blue car was about 6
weeks old, we decided to pack it up for an excursion to Mexico. My mom,
sister and I took a quick trip to the mall to pick up a couple of
last-minute items.
While driving through the parking lot, a woman in a
big
car ran a stop sign when she turned to her back seat to tell her two
little boys to stop fighting. We were right in front of her when she
turned forward. Slamming on her brakes she punched the accelerator
instead and slammed into our front passenger door, where I was sitting,
then in slow motion her car and our car started a slide sideways. She
turned around to see if her boys were okay, turned back around and saw
that she was going to hit us again! She tried to hit her brakes and
(again) hit the accelerator. Her car slammed into our rear passenger
door where my sister was sitting. Our brand new station wagon had a
crushed in front door and a crushed in back door.
After
the whole ordeal, we made it back home before my dad got home from
work. Mom had parked the car in the garage, she hadn't called my dad
about the accident. She felt overwhelmingly guilty about wrecking the
car, even though it wasn't her fault.
So, that evening,
my dad is dropped off by his buddy (carpool) and lifts the garage door
and comes in right past the car. (He usually comes in the front door so
we were all freaked!) He walks in the family room door, takes off his
boots, sits at the dining room table to read the paper and talk with Mom
as she cooks dinner.
After about 3 or 4 minutes he
pauses from reading, puts the newspaper down and walks back into the
garage; he just realized what he had seen in his peripheral vision. He
walks over to the car and stares at it, remember, he had seen all of us
so he knew we were all okay.
He walks back into the
house, sits at the table, picks the newspaper back up and tells Mom,
"Gee, Irene, if you had wanted an accordian you should have asked for an
accordian!"
We had a pool when I was growing up, right
next to it was a Mamosa tree. Pretty tree if its in someone else's
yard, just a junk tree if it's growing adjacent to your pool. It was
definitely not a friend of our pool filter. Mamosas are also famous for
their incredibly fast growth. Mom loved the tree; Dad hated it.
Every
two or three years, my dad and my brother would be sitting in the
family room watching college football or shooting pool. Mom would be
checking fridge and pantry while putting together a grocery list. With
list in hand she would head out to the car. The moment she backed out of
the garage, Mike and Dad would leap out the back door, grab the saws
stashed in the bushes and start sawing down the Mamosa. In the one to
two hours that Mom was gone, they would chop the tree down and cut all
the branches into small enough pieces to go into the wood pile. By the
time Mom came home there would be little evidence that a Mamosa tree was
ever there, sometimes it was weeks before Mom noticed it was gone. In 2
or 3 years it would happen all over again.
Our house
sat on a little rise on a dead-end road, backed by Bing Cherry and Plum
orchards. (Oh, yeah, remind to tell you about the time I got shot in the
tush with rock salt by the farmer for sitting up in his trees and
eating cherries while I read my books). The kids in the neighborhood
would congregate in the dead-end and we would play kick-the-can,
(full-contact hide and seek if you haven't heard of it). Every now and
then we kids would hear a full out Tarzan yell. We'd look up and there
was my dad, charging out the patio door, jumping over the hedge around
our patio, he would disappear for a moment then reappear as he vaulted
over the back fence. He would run into the street, kick the can and
vault back over the fence.
He played the piano really
well. Only problem was that he could only play 3 songs, Chopin's
Polonaise, the Boogie Woogie (Tommy Dorsey style) and the Hamm's beer
song, you know the one with the big bear, that goes, "in the land of sky
blue waters....!"
Whenever there is a floor fan
blowing he gets behind it and does his
Gepetto-searching-for-Pinochio impersonation, into the fan he calls,
"Pinocchio"! It does sound like he's underwater.
Speaking
of water; when my oldest son was about 2 years old, he would help my
dad with his yard work. They would set the sprinkler out on the lawn and
Dad would ask Little John to remind him in 20 minutes to change the
water. One time they let the water sit in the same place a couple of
hours and my son jumped up and yelled, "Good God the Water!" They both
ran out the door to change the position of the sprinkler. After that
every time my mom would get annoyed with my dad and start to pick on him
or nag him, he would jump up and yell, "Good God the water" and run out
the back door!
Every time we kids had to stay home
with a baby sitter while Mom and Dad went to some grown-up-event we
would ask Dad how the event was when they returned home. Dad would
answer as if it had been the most annoying experience ever! "It was okay
except there was a midget who had his nose in everyone's business and a
big tall guy who had his business in everyone's nose!"
Dad came up with a question every night at dinner. What do I think about affirmative action?
Where
do I stand on abortion? He insisted that I take a side and he always,
ALWAYS, took the opposite side. He made me support my thoughts with
facts, he taught me critical thinking.
He also taught
me to never support a football team south of the Mason-Dixon line, how
to cook killer beef stroganoff and lasagna, how to shoot, how to play
the boogie-woogie on the piano and that I was completely capable of
accomplishing anything I wanted.
Yup, that's my dad!"
