Happy 85th Dad! Another Birthday in heaven.

It's hard to imagine he'd be 85 today.  Almost 14 years since he's passed away and yet it seems like yesterday he was just here, with those deep, deep dimples, the twinkle in his dark brown eyes and the smile that would light up even the darkest room.  Look at his dimples!

I can't tell you who my father was as a man, I didn't know him as a man, I only knew him as my dad and he was gone before I grew up to understand or appreciate him as anything more.   

My dad with me - Christmas 1973.  (I was about 6 months and he was 45.)

I came across this quote a while back and was reminded of him.

The father of a daughter is nothing but a high-class hostage.
A father turns a stony face to his sons, berates them, shakes
his antlers, paws the ground, snorts, runs them off into the
underbrush, but when his daughter puts her arm over his
shoulder and says, "Daddy, I need to ask you something,"
he is a pat of butter in a hot frying pan."  ~ Garrison Keillor

Maybe because I was so little, maybe because I was the last, maybe because he was sick, maybe because he had more time, maybe because he was home, maybe because I spent so much time with him but, I see this in my Daddy.  I remember turning him to a pat of butter.  I remember snuggling into his lap in the evenings and he'd sing to me, with me as I learned the words.  "Home, home on the range...where the deer and the antelope play..."  I love that song now, though it wasn't may favorite then, and I remember the pride in his eyes, the joy in his smile, the softness of him as only a little girl could see in her daddy.   God - I miss him!

Happy 85th Birthday Dad!