My Dad

My Dad

My Dad. Faster than a locomotive, able to air-condition tall buildings in a single bound, and shorter than your average bear. My Dad or Daddy as I so often call him is a crotchety old fart, and yet there is just so much to love in all that stink.

Something that you should know right of the bat is that my Dad looks like one of Santa’s elves. He stands just a tad over five feet, with a round little belly, and a snowy white beard. In fact not to long ago my father appeared at my preschool wearing a Santa hat to fulfill his fatherly duties of putting a little something in my Christmas stocking. The Stocking stuffing happened during nap-time so one of the little cherubs, who was about three at the time, awoke and dreamily said “Sarah’s Dad is Santa Claus.” That little tale fills me with heart-bursting love. My Dad although crabby really is Santa Claus. He is one of the most honest and giving people I know.

Many a times the “perfect” birthday or Christmas card has appeared in my greedy little hands. Those cards are always special. He’ll spend hours searching for the ideal card. Combing Rite-Aid or Hallmark in his journey until he spies the one for you! Most people see cards as a semi-garbagable material meant to proclaim who gave you that gift. With my dad the card truly is your gift.

Over the years my Daddy has had many a hobby! Archery, car racing, car building, pool, pinball machines, libraries, record collections, computers, and believe it or not that isn’t the half of it and that Poppy of mine, Cliffy Pooh to those who love him best, gives his all to everything!

He taught me how to drive. Some of the most horrible moments of his life I’m sure. He even pulled the keys out of the ignition once while I was driving and told me, and I quote, “Get the hell out of this car. You are scaring the shit out of me!” end quote.

With my sister, who of course always drove like a pro and had no trouble, he praised her driving prowess. I was the rebelious daughter. The daughter who threw loaves of bread at him in the middle of Safeway and once even told him to “fuck off." Not my proudest moment, but I have to say he’s never grounded me in my entire life and all in all I was a good kid. The soft spoken, neat freak who did her best to keep the house clean and only cut school once.

When I got married he gave me away and gave me my most prize possession, my mother’s ring. A ring I wore that day in her memory and I now hold dear like no other. You see my Dad did his best to raise two girls. He may not have been perfect and Lord knows I surely wasn’t perfect, but he tried and I think we turned out pretty darn good the two of us.

He is a man who knows everyone's name at the local Wendy’s that he haunts or does free jobs for the guy at the local hardware store just to keep busy. You see my Dad has rarely sat down in his entire life and if you do happen to find him sitting you can guarantee that he is going to have a big fat paperback in his hands. The man reads nonstop and he has passed that love of reading down to his daughters. You see a book doesn’t have to be the best book ever written to be good, it just needs to have words and a story and thank God most books do and so does my Dad.

Christmas 1975

Christmas 2004