Father’s Day

Yesterday we celebrated Father’s Day with Italian food followed by some time out at the lake. Growing up my dad and I spent a lot of time in the lake. We would catch our own bait in filthy ponds using huge nets with sticks attached to each end. Imagine a volleyball net with much smaller holes being drug through a pond – that is what we did and we would catch hundreds of crawfish and minnows that we would then use on our trotlines. It was a lot of hard work and sometimes it was scary because the ponds we would get into would be green and murky and filled with moss and sludge. They’d smell like mildew and freshly mowed grass and when you got out of them you’d be an unsightly shade of green or brown – or both.

My dad used to also take my sisters and I to the lake and we’d ride on the innertube for hours. Afterward we’d just lay out in the water in the middle of the lake eating ham sandwiches slathered with Miracle Whip and barbecue Pringles. They were long lazy days filled with lots of good laughs and great times.

Yesterday we had a taste of that again as we took the boys who live with my parents out to the lake.  Felipe and Nathan aren’t very big, but they like to think that they are. We were wearing life jackets and they kept trying to dunk me. I almost drowned them a couple of times by accident. I’d be pushing one down and fighting with the other one and forget that I needed to let the other one up for air! haha. It was so much fun though, like having little brothers that I’ve never had before. They’re Mexican and so they are brown with me and since they live with my parents they can appreciate the parental humor that is my mom and dad. My mom is so funny and she loves to have a good laugh and my dad is so easy to make a parody of because he says so many things that are so country or he makes huge exaggerations that he actually believes are the truth. You have to love it.

I have to say yesterday was truly special. My dad has prostate cancer. We just found out last Thursday and we think it is going to be quite treatable, but it makes you stop and think about the fragility of life and how you might not have forever to spend time with those people that you love. I don’t believe that I take my family for granted and lately I’ve been trying to make steps to see my sisters more and even spend quality time with close friends.

My dad wasn’t a perfect dad growing up, but he was always there. I always knew in crisis that he was a rock that I could go to. He was a calm in the storm, he was the lighthouse in our family. We all looked to him and we still do. If you have a moment, send up a prayer for him, he tries not to show it, but I imagine that he is scared. Who wouldn’t be when they hear the dreaded “C” word?

Well, I hope you had a great Father’s Day and if you don’t have a great father, I’ll be happy to share mine.

Much Love.

Eddo