My Very First Santa

Today is/was my dad’s birthday. He would have been 89 today and I often think that he should still be here. I look at my grandchildren and know that if I am wrapped around their little fingers then he would be even more so. I see some new and impressive technology and think the dad would have been amazed by it. He would be the first to adapt to the internet, even if he couldn’t set the VCR or any digital clock for that matter.

I am pretty sure he would still be golfing and probably beating men half his age. Mind you, it would be pretty hard to pry him away from the TV during his favourite sports season. His favourite sports being hockey, baseball, basketball, golf, skiing, skating, football, and pretty much anything to do with carrying or throwing a ball and defying gravity. I don’t think that he was overly concerned with rhythmic gymnastics, but if it were the only thing on…When I was in Vegas and saw the sports betting areas in the casinos with about a hundred sports playing on a huge wall of TV’s, I knew that dad would have thought that he had died and gone to heaven. Maybe he is there now.

On his birthday I will go to a Home depot or some other home improvement superstore and just walk up and down the aisles remembering when I was able to do the same with dad. Whenever we worked together we would bicker and laugh, argue and eventually get the project done. We had different working styles, he would have to finish the job right away with a minimum number of breaks, whereas I would want to get the maximum number of breaks and the job would eventually get finished. Just like oil and water.

Dad and mom were visiting once and he decided that we needed to paint the ceilings in the house. I argued that I just wanted to visit and show him the mountains, but I now know that when you are a parent visiting your child, all you really want to do is to spend time with them. Of course we bought some paint and proceeded to paint the ceiling. It started to drop off in clumps! I guess you can’t use a latex paint on the stipple ceiling without it becoming liquid again. I was prepared to call it divine intervention and call it a day, but dad had other ideas. Back to the home depot we went and bought some oil based paint. Father knows best!

There was another time when he was visiting that he decided that we needed to put shingles on the shed at the side of the house. We got the shingles (from Home depot of course) and took them up on to the roof. Within about two minutes, the roof caved in and we both fell through and landed on our asses. Dad looked at me and said two things. Don’t tell your mother and what kind of roof did you build? I told him that it was meant to keep rain off, not support two grown men. He just chuckled and told me mission accomplished.

Dad was one of the funniest guys I met and he could tell a joke that would have you rolling on the floor. Everyone that knew him couldn’t say enough good things about him at his funeral. He would help anyone that needed it and give of his time generously, well, as long as there wasn’t a game of any kind on the TV.

Like I said, I often wish that I could call him up and tell him what Hurricane or Tornado did or said. It would be nice to tell him I loved him one more time and to look at his face. Well, I can do that if I just shave. I have a cup that I gave to my dad years ago that he surprisingly (or not so surprisingly) kept all of those years. I took it back when my mom passed away. Whenever I look at it I get all teary eyed. It is a Christmas cup and it reads “MY VERY FIRST SANTA”

I hope that where ever dad is now, they have kick ass cable, a killer golf course and I want him to know that I haven’t painted the ceiling since he left or dared to go up on the shed roof.