dad's birthday

today would have been dad's 88th birthday. in this picture, he looks remarkably like jonathan franzen. i wonder if that's why i've always liked jonathan franzen. i look at this picture and i find myself wondering who he was then? it must be from the late 70s, as i know it's from our house in town. i was probably 10, which would have made him 44. who was he at 44? he was in the state legislature. he owned and operated a weekly newspaper. he golfed with his buddies on wednesdays. he was a husband and a dad of two daughters. but who WAS he really? can we ever really KNOW our parents? we see them so differently from our child's perspective. can we ever access who they were? 

it's a weird thing to ponder, because at the same time as we have no idea, who we are is so utterly formed by them. what do i remember of those days? i remember that making him laugh was the goal. that was always the goal. i definitely still do that today, sometimes to my detriment, as always going for the laugh isn't always appropriate. but i still have a deep need to do so. 

i find it hard to go back to the child me, to remember what i thought and how i saw my dad. 

but today, on his birthday, i miss him. i think i write this every year, but i would so much love to talk to him about the state of the world - about trumpty dumpty and climate change and roe v. wade and the rest of it. i don't think he was one to make it all ok for me, but his perspective would always make me think about it in a different way and well, despair less. i miss him. a little bit every day, but especially on his birthday.

it's been three years

dear dad,

it's been three years now since you left us, which both seems like an eternity and just yesterday. as you know, i mostly talk to you in my head when i'm out in my garden, but i've been a bit absent lately as november is the darkest, most dreary month in denmark. it won't be that long before we go back towards the light and i'll be back to my usual conversations with you as i dig and plant beans and weed the asparagus.

i think you would be sad about mom's decline, but probably not very surprised. over the past year, she's lost her driver's license because she became a danger to herself and others on the roads. she had likely been that for years, with her distracted driving habits, donut in one hand and rooting around in her purse for lipstick or her glasses with the other, but in january things got serious. it took three cops to pull her over, despite driving on the shoulder at a crawl, and she was wearing slippers and no jacket and the windows were rolled down on a bitterly cold january day. some kind soul from platte gave her a ride home that evening, but everyone knew it was time for her to stop driving. the state agreed and took her license.

not driving meant her days in the house were numbered, as she couldn't get anywhere to get groceries or socks or menard's mugs or whatever else she felt obsessed to buy. but her cooking abilities had declined so dramatically after your death, that she wasn't cooking for herself much anyway and her diet was terrible. she'd always had a cavalier attitude to questionable canned foods, and her alzheimer's did not improve that. she wasn't taking very good care of her diabetes and her poor diet didn't help that.

so we found a place for her at tlc. they are kind to her and feed her three solid meals a day. they remind her to take her pills at the appointed times and she's in good physical health. helmet-clad, she rode her bike all summer, going out to the house when she wished. but then people began to call and report that she was in the middle of the road, not off to the side and they were worried about her safety. they reported it to the police and not that long ago, some busybody from the city office had the city's lawyer send a letter, asking for her bike to be taken away. the cow person in question enlisted a relative's help in obtaining moneek's address, but did that relative give her a heads up? no, she did not. that didn't feel too great.

as mom's confusion grows, she gets weird ideas in her head - it's her brain trying to make up for the gaps, to fill them in with something, anything. and it doesn't always make sense. recently, that resulted in her deciding to walk out to the house in the middle of the night - seeking home on some basic level. the police brought her back to tlc and safety, since it was a cold night and she was walking, no longer allowed to ride her bike. and then this week, the state paid a visit, given a heads up to a potential problem with mom by, probably, that cow in the city office. happily, they found only the truth at tlc - happy, content, well cared for residents.

and i'd love to be able to talk to you about it. i'd like to know what you would think. i think you would be disappointed. the supposed christians of that small town, indulging their righteousness, rather than kindness and compassion. all their kind words and admiration of you do not extend to mom, especially not as she loses herself. it makes me sad about platte and think that once she's gone, i may actually never go back there. as i feel now, i certainly feel no desire to do so. i think if i did, i would probably march into the city office and give that busybody a piece of my mind.

but if i look deep inside myself, i have also had trouble finding compassion for mom. she so willfully, studiously avoided being self-examined all these years, tho' she didn't avoid being selfish. it's been hard to watch and hard to summon compassion. but when i think of all she's lost since she lost you three years ago...her driver's license and thus her freedom, her home (it's still there, but she doesn't live in it), her horses, her mind, her memories, her friends (it's hard to be friends with someone with alzheimer's), her phone (she never knows where it is)...i do feel sorry for her. and i think it would make you sad too.

we miss you and we also miss her, even tho' she's still here in body. but i'll tell you more when i'm back in the garden.

* * *

and for something completely different:

these pictures are very striking.

the big eight-oh

my dad turns 80 today. i took these photos when he was visiting us last april. he's standing on the quayside, right outside of husband's workplace at the harbor in esbjerg. i don't think he looks 80 at all.

when i think of all of the things he's seen and lived through...from his 8th birthday being eclipsed by the bombing of pearl harbor in 1941, to the first electrical light he can remember shining brightly over the table at the house on the creek to the korean war to the kennedy assassination to nixon's resignation to the election of a b-movie actor to the white house to the monica lewinsky scandal to september 11...it's quite the scope of events. not to mention the technologies - from the old linotype that he did the paper on the early years, through to those compugraphic behemoths with their punchtapes feeding into a big round trash can to the early macs to the little iPad he checks his sports scores on today. what a technological sea change.

i hope he has many more years ahead to tell us his stories, always with a wry sense of humor. happy birthday, dad. and many, many more.

happy father's day!!

happy father's day!

if you were here, we wouldn't make you drink one of those lemonade beers.

funny memory

when my dad was in the state legislature in the late 1970s, to point out the absurdity of some or other republican bill, he tacked on an amendment to make the fence post the state tree of south dakota.

happy birthday dad!

we used to stage a yearly shot where we got dad up on a horse. this was from summer 2010. dad and amber.

i remember the one horse show we dragged dad to...it was in tyndall and it was about 104°F in the shade all day. the lunch stand ran out of cold drinks. tyndall ran out of ice. the swimming pool across the street was like a bathtub. and still we showed on. funnily enough, dad never wanted to come to a horse show again...however, he happily continued to foot the bill for the horse shows (and shoes) for years and years afterwards. as long as he didn't have to attend.

happy birthday, dad.  we wish we were there to celebrate with you and eat german chocolate cake.

happy father's day!

my sister had to remind me that it's father's day today. i can't even plead that it's an american holiday because we also have father's day here in denmark (tho' it may not be today). i'll admit i'm pretty rubbish at remembering these things.  i'm not sure if it makes me a bad daughter tho'. and we didn't really do anything for the father in this house today either and all three of his daughters were present.

sabin and her grandfather in kongs have in copenhagen, august 2008

dad was last here in denmark in august 2008 for our housewarming at our old house - the housewarming of our addition, as we'd lived there for a good 7 years by then. we were frantically trying to finish up the last things so we could hold the party and happily, dad volunteered to get up on a ladder (the wisdom of sending a 75-year-old man up a ladder could be discussed, but we won't get into that here and all's well that ends well) and clean the windows.

dad washing the windows at our old house.

i think he and mom knew something about a vinegar solution and as i recall, they wiped them down with old newspapers. they'd never been so clean and i'm sure they also haven't been since. in fact, it wouldn't hurt if they came for a visit and cleaned the windows around here. they sure could use it and they're much closer to the ground.

look how happy he was to be up on that ladder!

here's dad, helping with a wheelbarrow of driftwood. sadly, he had encountered a rather large step and that explains the exasperation on his face. i was happy that husband was the cause of that look, because i'd been the cause of it plenty of times myself.

this is a rather typical exasperated look on my father's face.
goodness knows i've given him enough cause for exasperation over the years.

some of the things i inherit from my dad are my liberal leanings (he is one of about 4 democrats in south dakota), my love of reading and keeping up with the news, my ability to write (you can't learn it, you either have it or you don't, or so he once told me), my lack of patience for many things, but especially stupid people, making fun of people and things for comic effect, my tendency to be a bit too loud...

but also a generous spirit, a curiosity about the world, an interest in other places and things, a love of playing cards, competitiveness, an easy ability to laugh and appreciate humor. those are some of the things i love about my dad.

dad, mom and a much smaller sabin in august 2008.

so a big happy father's day to you, dad!!! sorry we weren't there to go fishing and cook up a mess of walleye and a big batch of asparagus from your garden!