It has been 15 years since I stood in my father's hospital room, looking out the window at a blooming tulip tree while listening to his quiet breathing as it slowed and finally stopped. My father's Thoreau type life was all about outdoors and loving the natural world. It was so fitting that the blossoming of one of his favorite trees should accompany his passing.
I miss him on Father's Day. I miss him every day. I would always invite him to our home on Father's Day where we would enjoy a meal, laugh at his jokes and watch him open his gifts. While I know he enjoyed the gifts, it was just being together with his family that he enjoyed the most.
Because my father had to spend most of his time in the barn, fields or woods there was little time left to spend with his family, but he was still able to show us that he cared. I can remember eating cereal from boxes that had cut-outs of trains on the back. I would eat my cereal while looking at the back of the box and visualize what the train would look like cut out and put together, but my tiny mind and hands weren't mature enough for me to complete that process. More than once I would wake up in the morning to find one of the completed cars where my father had carefully placed it while I was sleeping after he had put it together for me in the middle of the night.
Almost as much as my father loved his children, he loved his tractors and trucks. From the time he was a tiny pre-farmer..............
.............until a few weeks before he died at 79. When I hear a tractor my mind always sees my father bouncing around the field, lost in his world of hay mowing or manure spreading.
One of his tractors still sits in his half-finished barn on the Mosquito Path, slowly decaying with time. Paul was recently up there looking at it and decided he would buy a battery and see if he could get the tractor to start. Well, you know how that is. Once you start fixing one little thing you can't stop. Paul began bringing bits and pieces back to fix and soon we had half the tractor on our picnic table.
There is a LOT to keep a retired man busy. The fenders need to be scraped down and repainted. The carburetor needs to be rebuilt and there are a host of other things I don't understand.
Some unknown person decided that they would like to avail themselves of the gas in the gas tank so siphoned the gas out but neglected to put the gas cap back on. As a result a group of mice thought it would make a lovely home. The tank was full of bits and pieces of cushion foam and my father's shirts and jacket. It's not easy to clean a mouse house out of a gas tank.
My father's habit of saving EVERYTHING (old bent nails, light bulb containers) used to truly drive me crazy. Now we thank him for it because this old manual for his Farmall tractor that he saved is also saving Paul's sanity (except for that one page that's missing that he really needs). The manual is torn and fragile and even shows the scorch marks of surviving the milkhouse fire but it is a treasure that we couldn't do without.
Yes, I'm missing Daddy this Father's Day, as always. I have bits and pieces of his life scattered all over my lawn and that feels good. My husband is resurrecting a memory. No matter where I go my father will always be there beside me. I have memories that make me laugh and smile. Happy Father's Day, Daddy.
