To all the dads out there

[auntiemeesh]

Happy Father's day to panthera_onca, mamoulian, cajun and arthurfrdent. I hope you all had great days with your little (or not so little) ones.

We had a party for our dad yesterday. I was unfortunately unable to attend in person, but did call and talk to everyone on the phone during the party. My dad turned 80 in May so this was a combination 80th Birthday/Father's Day party.

There's been a lot of rough times between me and my dad, we don't talk much, and when ani_no_mouse sent out a request asking for memories she could put in a memory book for him, I wasn't sure I could come up with anything pleasant. But I thought about it a lot, and came up with a few things.

1. I can remember when I was very little, maybe four years old, one day I was walking with my dad in the yard. I was feeling very big and grown-up and proud of how fast I could walk and to prove it, raced my dad from the house to his workshop. He let me win.

2. Dad was a lot of fun when we were very young. He invented games for us to play, like the Elephant Game - He would be the elephant king and order us to go get him ten bunches of bananas or other things like that, and we would scurry off on all fours pretending to be little elephants and bring him whatever he wanted. (Oddly enough, I tried this game with kids I babysat for a few years ago and they loved it too, although to my adult mind it seems pretty boring.)

3. Fox Stories - My dad invented a family of foxes and told all kinds of crazy/wild stories about them. The Foxes (Charlie, Elmer, Lucy and Mother Fox) had adventures ranging from chicken hunting, to buying Rolls Royces while working at McDonalds. For many years, Dad would come up with a story on the spot if we asked him for one.

4. My dad has always been a very creative person and this creativity showed up in many ways while I was growing up. He loved to paint and I still have several of his paintings in storage, waiting for a place to display them. He wrote a lot as I was growing up, and really was the inspiration for my desire to be able to write. To round things out, he built things as well. He made a Creche out of paper mache for Christmas one year, he built tree swings and forts. He taught me that when you want something, you don't have to run out to the store and buy it, you can make it yourself, whether it's a swing set or a costume or a basket to hang from the bed.

I don't always see eye to eye with my dad, and we aren't close, but I do love him.

Comments

[illyria-novia.livejournal.com]

Oh, you have an awesome, adorable dad! That Fox family stories, and the swing and tree fort. And the elephant game!

I don't always see eye to eye with my dad, and we aren't close, but I do love him.

Same here. Only in my case the first two parts should've been in past tense. Eh. I miss my dad.

Thanks for sharing!

[auntiemeesh.livejournal.com]

My dad was great with us when we were very little. I miss that sometimes. The poor man never figured out how to relate to us once we started thinking our own thoughts and it's sad to see him now, alone and not understanding why none of us are close to him.

dada

[lyda-pearl.livejournal.com]

way to go Meesh. I hope you print it out and send it him to include in his book.
LP

Re: dada

[auntiemeesh.livejournal.com]

I will. :)

[ani-no-mouse.livejournal.com]

The whole memory book was a bit of a challenge. Unfortunately, it is easy to remember the times that weren't so great, and the ways in which growing up in our family was "sweet like acid" as lyda_pearl once put it when one of her friends said our parents were so sweet after meeting them very briefly. Still, I found it very rewarding. There were a lot of positive themes that emerged from all the memories contributed by his siblings, us kids and a couple of our cousins. A few of the not-so-positive ones (such as a tendency toward recklessness - even when it involved his own kids' safety and well-being) also emerged, but for the purposes of this project they were mostly edited out.

[auntiemeesh.livejournal.com]

It's so easy to let the negative memories override the positive ones, but they are in there, if I dig deep enough. The memory book was a really good idea, I think, for us as well as for Dad. It's good to do the digging and remember those happy moments.

[arthurfrdent.livejournal.com]

heh, I hope my own kids look back on my goofiness as endearing rather than embarassing... and thanks for the father's day wishes...

[auntiemeesh.livejournal.com]

There's nothing wrong with goofiness. I have very fond memories of playing those silly games with my dad, and I'm sure your kids will feel the same way about you.

[whtmtnwmn.livejournal.com]

I sure can relate to your quandry. I'd be very hard pressed to come up with a single happy memory of my father. You did very well to come up with four!
=D

[auntiemeesh.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I wasn't sure I'd be able to come up with much, but there were happy moments with him, it's just that they were so long ago and there's so much other stuff piled on top that it took a little digging to unearth the memories.