This One's For Pops

Readers, you'll have to bear with me.  I'm sentimental, and so am compelled to use my blog once again to share a little something more personal..

At dinner last night Nathan and I told each another stories about our fathers.  On the eve of Father's Day it seemed an appropriate dinner topic-a celebration of what we each love and respect about our Pa.  (Nathan is the only person I have ever met in my entire life who also calls his father 'Pa')  We had each other laughing with childhood memories.  The time his father handled a midnight invasion of a bat while wearing a chain saw mask, swinging a tennis racket wildly while a young Nathan followed behind..watching with curiosity and not an ounce of concern for his own unmasked face.  The time mine gave a stern lecture about the responsible use of his state of the art PVC potato launcher mere moments before sending a rotten potato at record speed through the greenhouse windows.

On one of our first days in Cambodia, Nathan and I watched from our hotel balcony as a little girl dragged her father from one flowering tree to another.  At each she pointed with her tiny fingers to the prettiest blossoms.  Her father had endless patience as he picked flower after flower for her inspection.  He was clearly bringing just as much joy to her with each delivery as she was to him with her delighted giggles.

I have the feeling that if asked, my own father might say of me that I have too much heart and not enough head.  I admit that sometimes that is true.  As an adult, my relationship with him isn't quite as simple as that of the Cambodian girl and her father - like it surely used to be.  The joy we get from being a part of one another's lives is sometimes tangled with the messy details of living - of making mistakes and changing course.  That said, there is no man on the planet that I respect more than my father.  He has earned my respect and love in a thousand different ways, with good deeds, compassion, discipline, empathy, intelligence, work ethic, creativity, and his genuine interest in the natural world.

My father is the man who can fix any problem.  Plumbing, farm equipment, woodwork, cars, conflicts requiring diplomacy (big and small).  He can deliver babies from the belly of a dying sow, run a bean farm while working full time and build a 36 foot sail boat from scratch.  My father is the man that made 6 foot tall stilts for his own amusement..and then needed his own tractor bucket to lift himself into them.  He got up at 430 to work in the fields and expected the family to pitch in.  He taught my brothers and I about work ethic through his relentless efforts on the farm and his limitless energy and excitement to learn new things.  His expectations were always high, but never impossible. He believes in doing things right the first time, but not being afraid to learn from mistakes.  His confidence in me, his only daughter, always inspired me to push myself harder than I otherwise might have.
I am proud to have the father that I do.  I think often of the things I have learned from him and am thankful for the many ways I am better for having listened to his council.

As Nathan and I reminisced, it surprised me to think of all the things I don't know about my father.  Much of his life before marrying my mother, and before I was born is a mystery to me.  I hope to get answers to some of my questions..to understand exactly how my father became who he has always been to me.  But the truth is:  I know and have always known the most important things about him.  He is a good man with a good heart, he loves and sacrifices for his family and he is exactly the type of father that deserves a day to be celebrated.

So...Happy Father's Day Pa.  Hope you can figure out how to use the Vietnamese mouth harp I sent your way.  It sounded like a suffering animal when I tried it.