Dear Dad,I've always thought of September as the start of a new year. September is the month of my birthday (and yours) and the month when kids start a fresh new school year a whole grade higher (hopefully).
September is also the month the winter wood is delivered to the house, by delivered I mean dumped in a heap in the middle of the driveway. Last September you didn't get to finish stacking the wood so this was the first of the manly tasks Mum and I had to tackle. Looking at the massive pile, I could hear your voice and I was able to roll up my sleeves and get the job done, "that wood 'aint gonna stack itself you know!" With every piece of wood, I thought of you, I talked to you and I knew I had to figure out how I was going to live in a world without you in it.
I didn't realize just how much work you did because you always seemed to be enjoying it. How hard can it be to gather up garbage and take it to the curb? You would gather it, sort it, pull out what you didn't think was garbage, separate the bottles and cans and tie the cardboard whistling while you worked. Again, your voice can be heard, on garbage gathering night, every week without fail "too late for the garbage, no, hop in!" Then you would laugh and carry on to the next room with your green garbage bag in hand.
The summer brought a whole host of new chores and some firsts for me. There is your voice again, "that lawn 'aint gonna mow itself you know!" The ride-on mower became my BFF on some days, my worst enemy on others. Geez, I watched you on that thing year after year thinking to myself, "he calls that work?" You're sitting down, catching rays, how hard can it be? Well, he doesn't have a cup holder, that's rough. OMG! Grass in my hair, grass in my mouth, grass in my ass, sun burnt and sore, the shower never felt so good!
Having walked a little in your shoes and ridden on your mower, I have a new found appreciation for you. I understand things about you that I didn't before. Like when we ask if we can have pet chickens and you say "no, too much work" and we think you're mean because really, how much work is a chicken? Too much we've come to discover now that we have two! The thing is, baby chicks don't stay little for long, they grow and need a house and food and a perch and they poop A LOT! You knew all that, you also knew you would have been the one building the house and the perch and cleaning the poop, when you weren't mowing or weeding or sorting garbage. I get the "no", you weren't mean. By the way, we turned your outhouse into a chicken house, we kept the Shania Twain poster up though.September is almost over and we've come full circle. When the school year started the Kid said, "this is the first year Papa isn't here to say have a good year in school and do your best". See, he listened to you all those years AND he heard your voice as I'm sure he will with the start of every school year.
It's soon time to stack wood again and I am no longer trying to figure how to live in a world without you in it because you are in it. You are in each of us, your voice will go on, in fact I think I hear it now, "turn out that dang light, the name aint Edison!"
Love Poops
♥for the record, Mum has assumed the role of the whistling garbage collector and I'm going to assume the role of mean.
