March 17th, 2007
eight years ago
In last Tuesday’s post about crayfish, I mentioned that I used to play with them and pretend they were horses back when I was knee-high to a grasshopper. In the comments, Pablo asked, “But did you ever get a horse?”
Well, yes, as a matter of fact, I did. But it wasn’t my first horse. The very first horse was the one in the above photo, taken when I was 13 months old. The horse was made by my father, who is to the right, and painted by my mother, who took this photo.
A year ago today, I wrote about my dad, who died eight years ago this evening. The above photo is a nice reminder of how much he liked to make things for all of us. He built our first family home, our summer cottage, a couple of go-carts for my brothers, and later on, helped Don and I with our house and supervised the building of our first cordwood barn here at the farm. Those are just a few things that I can think of off the top of my head. There were many more. My dad was always busy with some kind of project and, as I wrote last year, he could do just about anything. He was the kind of person you would want along if your spaceship broke down on some alien planet and had to be patched back together with nothing but the contents of your lunch box. McGyver had nothing on him.
My dad enjoyed challenges and liked doing things for people. If you came to him with a question or problem, in no time, he would have an answer or a solution. I suppose that’s why, in part, it seemed so crazy when he became ill. Up until then, I don’t think I’d ever seen him not be able to fix something and make everything right in no time. It seemed almost impossible that he wouldn’t just invent some way to make himself better.
Anyhow, it was nice to come across this image recently while scanning photos for the online family photo gallery I’ve been putting together. It’s a great reminder of just one of the many fun times we had together.
To my friend, mentor and father — Thanks, Dad. Miss ya.