Missing Dad Today

It's strange the things that bring Dad to mind and how some days are harder than others.

Yesterday, I picked up my cousin Sarah from her house. As I waited in the car, sitting idle at the neighbors house, I found myself staring at an old air conditioner hanging from the side window of a 1960's home.

Suddenly, I was transported to Forth Worth, Texas in the 1970's. We (Mom, Dad, Becky and myself) lived in a brick house on Rector Ave.

Texas summers were hot enough to make the black top bubble and turn a house into an oven. We had two air conditioners hanging from our house. One in the master bedroom which sat at the top of a hallway containing the doors to two other bedrooms and a bathroom.

A second air conditioner hung out the back of our living room window which faced a large back yard complete with a metal swing set that tipped if you swung too high and a silk tree waaaaaaaaaaaaaay in the back at the far left corner.

The fences were all made of chain link back then and when my sister and I felt brave we ventured the mile it seemed to take to walk up to the silk tree and watch the worms spin while petting the neighbors chihuahua who always had a building tick hanging from it's forehead. Mom said if they removed it the dog would probably die.... HA!

In the summers, after Dad picked us up from school, he would tell us to go play at a friends house while he turned on the AC to cool everything off. I distinctly remember how it felt to come in from the heat to the coolness of our house...so many memories there:

A pet parakeet buried in the front yard; watching my parents from the hallway entrance as they sat at the kitchen table and cried into a yellow phone because dad's mom had just passed away; being chased by a wasp across yard after yard until it caught and stung me, then dad carried me home and put a paste made from meat tenderizer on the bite to draw out the poison; standing on the side of the house on a cold windy day and thinking to myself to always remember the feeling of the sun and cold wind mixed together on my skin; Joann Jacoby, Joyce Williamson, and Skeeter who chucked a sharpened wooden stick at me during a 'block fight' that almost skewered my eye, but instead nicked my cheek.

I remember we'd watch Star Trek in the evenings on a large push button TV that sat on the floor.

As I came forward from my memory, I was left with the overwhelming thought, "Dad was a kind and gentle man".

Today has been 7 months since Dad died. I miss him.