THANKFUL FRIDAY

Michael once asked me what camping trips were like with my dad. When I pull up every camping trip from my memory bank, I see Dad puttering. He was always messing with this or that on the camper or the truck. On our annual fishing trips to Colorado, he’d have us up before the sun. He would be loading the truck up with fishing supplies while we rubbed sleep from our eyes and ate breakfast. After half a day of fishing, we’d come back to the campsite where Dad would unload the truck and start cleaning fish. Then he would get his little grill set up. He would cook fish while Mom would make side dishes. When dinner was finished, we would all help with cleanup, then sit down at the table where we would spend the last of the daylight prepping lines and lures for the next morning. I think I have one photo of Dad sitting in his camp chair enjoying the campfire. It was taken during the summer of my Senior year. Dad made a big deal about that trip and about going to a campground called Fun Valley. The two of us joked the whole time about how fun it was at Fun Valley. He painted ‘Fun Valley’ on one of our campfire logs and gave it to me at the end of that trip.

A few weekends ago, Michael and I went down to my brother’s cabin and set up our camper that we had parked there for the winter. My brother and sister-in-law joined us a day later and we got to spend the weekend together hanging around their cabin. My brother would sit down for a few minutes and then he would be up, puttering around, digging through their shed or moving stone pavers. They had spent the whole week there recently as their vacation and Katrina told me that as soon as my brother got home and sat down in his chair, he fell asleep. I see so much of Dad in my brother Randy. Dad was rarely still. The only times you would see him sitting still would be in the evenings. That is when he would sit down in his worn-out recliner and promptly fall asleep while reading the paper. Unfortunately, after he retired and started up his peanut roasting business, evenings were spent roasting peanuts for the next day. He would get a batch going in his roaster in the garage and then come inside, sit down in his recliner and fall asleep. Dad burned many a batch of peanuts.

Because of our age difference, Randy has often taken on duel rolls of big brother and father figure. I guess that is why I always try to send him something for Father’s Day. Even though I give him a hard time for his choice of ‘news’, he’s still the man in my life that I look up to. He’s still the man in my life who I know will always be there for me. I miss Dad and his ridiculous dad jokes and his constant puttering about. Randy may not have the ridiculous dad jokes, but he’s got the puttering part down. When I see Randy in puttering action, I smile because I see our Dad and then I’ll see Randy do something that is completely and totally Randy.

In that moment, I’ll think to myself how lucky I have been to have them both and how lucky I am to still have my big brother.