Oh, Dad

I would ask him to write them down.
Please, write them down.
You better write them down !! pester-y me would beg, because you know how I forget.
He’d laugh and say ok, OK, one day he will write them alllll down.
Then we would get busy with life and his stories would remain in his head, not on a paper

& randomly, he’d tell me another
& I’d say, DANG, these are GREAT !! Pleaseeeeeee write them down because you KNOW how I forget.
Har. Har. Har.
Ok Ok Ok

Until finally, I told this father of mine, I want no other anything.
No birthday present.
No Christmas present.
No Easter, 4th of July or just because it’s Tuesday.
From now until eternity, the only ONE. THING. I request is to PLEASE write those stories down ’cause he KNOWS how I forget.

Best day ever was when he handed me that yellow legal pad.
On it, in Dad’s one of a kind handwriting, are his stories.
I call them, Nine Lives.
Times when he probably could have, should have left, but lived to tell the tale.

Like the time he was 8 years old and had strep throat
& his mama came thisclose to calling the priest.
Or the time the brakes went out on a car he was driving in Chicago.
Or those two and a half typhoons.
Or when he almost fell into a fiery mold at the steel mill.
The man has many
& in between his adventures he married an incredible woman.
Together they raised a family of six.
How he lived in a house of four daughters, two sons, one bathroom is the biggest survival of all.

Enter yesterday, when he came over to pick up bananas. That’s right. HE came to me cause the fella who loves to keep moving needed to move. And as I handed him those bananas he and Bro adore having with breakfast, those bananas I had just purchased from a busy grocery store, I paused, wondered and silently scolded myself with a SHOULD I be doing this ??!??

Oh, Dad. I realize you are finding this STAY HOME biz near impossible given your outgoing nature and old-school ways and I get it !! I do ♥  but you really, REALLY need to follow through on what we are being told ’cause I’ll be darned, if after surviving 9-plus lives, I’ll allow a virus named Corona, to take you down.

I can’t. I won’t.

So, sit tight, Dad. Read your books and do that 2000 piece puzzle and watch your shows and stay away from the stores and the people and ME. I’ll leave those bananas and anything else you need on your back step, Dad and we’ll talk on the phone every single day. And if we happen to coordinate our walking time on that favorite trail, I will not offer a hug, Dad, for I cannot live with myself if I were the one to hand this beast to you. YOU.

I need more stories, Dad, selfishly, pleadingly, I do.

so please go against every helper, goer, gotta see, gotta be !! vibe in your 88 year old body and just BE STILL

& days from now, when life returns to normal,  I Survived Covid-19 By Hunkering, Sheltering and Isolating will be your next awesome testimony as I BIG HUG nag you to please, please, pleasy-please write it down

🙂

’cause you KNOW how I forget.

Above The Rain