Dear Old Dad

It was Father's Day. It was also move in day, my Dad was moving in with us in his dotage.

Julia and I had bought a huge house on a good sized lot. There was a ton of room, plenty for us all to have space. The only thing was, it didn't have a garage. Instead, it had this humongous carport area, big enough to have like half a basketball court on it, and that was besides a covered area where we could park our cars. On the outside edge of the three lane driveway, there was a two story concrete wall, and in fact it was pointed in the middle so it was pretty tall.

Well, Dad shows up and he has a moving crew, and they start constructing a huge piece of plastic shelving, like we had in the basement of our house when I was growing up. When they are done we find out why - he has like tens of old beat up suitcases, the kind they had in the '50s all the way up to the more modern rolling ones. All different kinds. And the thing is, they are all empty.

We start to object. This is a hideous display, and we try to explain to him they are ugly and useless and will get destroyed anyway in the weather, so now we are going to have to cover the whole area. He gets agitated and upset. "It's all I have of her (my mom). Each of those suitcases is from a trip I took with her, and those memories are what I have."

We calmed down and let the crew pile all those pieces up high. You just can't sweat the small (well, large) things.

This is the dream I just had, so I guess my Dad visited me on Fathers' Day.

Miss you Dad,

Happy Fathers' Day all.