Friday is going to be another very silent day. Right now, it’s Wednesday, and it’s already getting to me, the uncomfortable-ness of having to spend even one second with my dad. I have to take him to the doctor. I’ll probably also take him to the grocery.
I will just hate it.
I used to look forward to the times when he’d come over of a weekend, pick up us kids, and then take us to the lake, which is what we called his folks’ house, or take us to Shaftsburg, which is where he lived with his second wife.
Of course in retrospect, all he really did was pick us up from our mom’s house, drive us to wherever, then drop us off to go party with his friends. We’d never see him again until it was time to go back home.
The rides in the old days would have dad speeding along, 80 or 90 miles an hour, along country roads with barely a stop sign in sight. He’d take hilly roads that, when his latest new Ford truck would nearly bottom out in a gully from sheer speed, we’d feel our stomachs nearly fall out. It felt so funny!
The rides, though, were dangerous, and not just because of the speed. When we were kids at that time, seat belts were not standard, so we never wore them. We also always stood on the bench seat with our hands putting death grip-pressure on the cabin ceilings. Our knees would buckle when the truck hit the lowest point of the road and then our legs would bounce back into place as the truck sped up the next rise.
We giggled. We laughed. We didn’t talk then any more than dad and I talk now, but back then, there was fun.
I miss fun.
My Life With Dad 