I always remember my father on this January 5th. It was, for his life on this earth, the celebration of his birth. He would have been 61 today. I was looking through an old journal I found in his class notes from 1997 when he was taking a Ministry Training class at his church. They were teaching all kinds of classes from English to instructional courses on the various book of the Bible. There were old tests and homework assignments in this big binder, and then this journal. For two months or so, he wrote these interesting and brief entries, ranging from the weather outside, what he did at work, who he was praying for, and often a brief synopsis of the day. It was really cool to read through that and catch just a brief window of time into his thoughts. One of my favorite entries went something like, “Had a chat with Joshua today. Talked about predestination, foreknowledge and election. Gave him some food for thought, and he gave me some as well. Didn’t come to any conclusions yet. Good talk.” I laughed when I read that as I recalled our often spirited discussions on Free will vs. the Calvinist approach. Funny how in the end, years later, I came over to his side of the debate. Of course, now He has a bit more authority on the subject as He can see a much broader perspective from the courts of heaven, and gets to experience what He so often talked about. He prayed for us every day. Our names were there so frequently, and at one point he even spoke of how good it was to talk to Matt & Trish and share the gospel with her. Another of my favorite entries was one where he spoke about taking the afternoon and doing a leaf ride up to Speculator and seeing the beauty of the colors and thanking God for His artistry. I know that I got that from him. Just taking an hour or so and go driving and breathing in nature, seeing the beauty that God has created. Dad taught me that. Like the day I wrote about where we hugged the tree… just felt its life. Those moments are never forgotten, and I was glad to find this little black and white composition notebook that gave me just another little piece of insight into my father.
Someday, someone will look through all these writings of mine – all those little journals on my shelf that contain my thoughts and feelings – and get a different glimpse into my thoughts and who I was. It’s important to write. It’s important to share stories. If there is one thing I wish, it’s that I could remember those amazing stories my father used to tell. He was so good at it. Some nights before bed when we were young, he would come in and tell these amazing stories of wild horses or made up people that went on adventures and did all these incredible things and they all had these good morals or would turn you to the goodness of God… he just had that ability.
We had a lot of interesting times growing up, that is for sure. And even though he could be a strict father, he did have this other side to him that would come out — we saw it more as he got older and more chilled out. One time I was helping him build this house. It was a decent sized house with a cathedral ceiling that went all the way down the main hall into an open living room. Well he was doing drywall that night, and I was with him and he decided to race me down the hall. Of course I was pretty fast then, but he had on the aluminum drywall stilts that raised him up another 3′ or so, so he was about 8′ tall. So we raced down the hall and he actually beat me, but then he tripped and fell over in the middle of the living room. It was pretty funny. I’m sure his knee hurt for a while after that. Same house – he was working on the roof. It was late fall and there was frost on the plywood. He had just gotten up on the roof and there was an extra sheet on the roof that someone had tacked on there with a nail. Not sure how but he stepped on that sheet and the nail pulled loose and down the roof he slid like a snowboard. He was going to jump to the side but this part of the house was on the hill so it was two stories above the ground and his truck was parked in the driveway below so he thought the best thing would be to land on the truck. And so he did. Rode that board down and landed smack on the windshield. Which broke, naturally, but I don’t recall that he got hurt.
Even when he did get hurt, he barely stopped working. One time when I was really little, I was helping him work at DeVito’s Garden Center and he was doing something and stuck a pitchfork in his toe. He calmly told me to go get him a bandaid from the office. Another time he was nailing a stud wall together on the ground to stand up. He was using the nail gun and nailed a 16D nail through the 2×4 and straight into his big toe. He pulled it out with his framing hammer and kept going. Another time he was climbing up scaffolding to do some shingling (It might have even been on the same house as mentioned in the story above) and they had overloaded the platform with shingles. He had warned them about it, but they thought it would hold. The thing collapsed and part of the scaffolding split his forehead wide open. So rather than a doctor, he went to my Gram’s and he was like, “Ma, just takes some butterfly bandages and push this together.” And that’s what they did. He was a tough guy. Not impervious to pain, of course, but not one to let that kind of stuff slow him down.
Anyway, it is 1:30 and I have rambled a little long, but it is good to remember some of these things and it is good to have the faith and hope that Dad is in such a place of amazing beauty and light. Some days when I am walking in the woods and it’s quiet and still, I hear the echoes of his voice in my memory – laughing, teaching, telling stories, when we walked the woods together all those years ago… And it always makes me smile. Miss you Dad.