Category: Dad

Mom made a gaggle o’ dolls over the years, but the one in this slide was not one of them. I was not yet born when this photo op came to pass. Since my Sister Who Wishes To Remain Nameless (SWWTRN) is holding the doll, I’m assuming it was hers. Perhaps she was channeling my future earthly birth with me while I was still in the Pre-existence. C’mon—it could have happened. Notice that my sisters have both donned long Bow Ties o’ the Day for what the date on the slide indicates was Christmas of 1958.

Dad’s a looker, eh? In my mind’s eye, Dad always has his Sean Connery beard—even though this shows me to be wrong. Come to think of it, Mom started making dolls about the same time Dad grew his signature beard—sometime in the 80’s. Perhaps that was how they each dealt with their newly empty nest and their proverbial mid-life crises. I dunno. I just know that in the 80’s, Dad’s beard sprouted its salt-and-pepper glory, and plaster doll parts were perpetually scattered throughout flat surfaces in the house, in their various stages of doll-completion.

FYI Here’s the birth order of my siblings and I, for anyone who might be wondering: Betty (front); SWWTRN (back); Ron (front, middle); Rob (on Dad’s lap); a bigly time-gap (a true pregnant pause); then, yours truly.

If you ever want to rile up Mom, just tell her I said I know I was an accident. She does not abide that “accident” talk about me. I can usually get her calmed down about it by explaining I meant to say I was more of an “afterthought.” At 89, Mom still shines with her comebacks. Not too long ago when I was egging her on about the topic, she said, “An afterthought? I should say not! There was no thought after.” And then I said, “Mom, get your mind out of the gutter, so mine can roll by!” We continued the back-and-forth, and we laughed until I lost my breath and had to take a hit off her oxygen mask. We are soooooo related. We are The Two Helen’s! Vaudeville is our next stop.

BTW Mom doesn’t really have an oxygen tank. It just made the story better to paint a picture of me stealing the old gal’s oxygen. Note to self and others: The key to telling good stories is to never let the truth get in the way—as long as you fess up to it later.

Dad’s actual cell phone—with its paint and scuffs—joins me and bees Bow Tie o’ the Day for this post.

Early in the 2000’s, Mom was fine with the kitchen wall home phone and an answering machine. Dad got a cell phone early on because he dragged his bees from here to California and all over creation, and he hunted coyotes who-knew-where before dawn daily. Bee yards and coyote dens rarely have phones or phone booths, so Dad packed his clunky cell phone in his Dodge truck in case of emergency—along with the other lifesaving travel essentials: water, toilet paper, and matches. He rarely made or received a call. Mom finally frequently called his cell from the home phone to check on him towards the end of his days here on the planet.

When Dad went to The Big Coyote Hunt in the Sky, in 2007, Mom naturally inherited his cell phone. With it, she also inherited his cell phone number, and she began the process of gradually becoming one with the cell phone, as we have all done with our own. The landline home phone number which had belonged to Mom and Dad for close to 70 years was only shut down a couple of years ago, but Mom had quit using it long before that actually happened.

He’s been gone close to 13 years now, but I’ve never taken Dad’s name off my cell phone’s contacts list. Nor have I added Mom’s name to my contacts. I call Mom by dialing for Dad. There is something eternally reassuring about calling Dad’s phone number and having Mom answer. Really, it’s just like it always was with our kitchen wall phone. Its number was perpetually listed under Dad’s name in the annual Delta phone book. But it was always Mom who answered the ring.

Remember when you were a kid and you got a cool new clothing item you’d been bugging your parents to buy you—like a swimming suit or moon boots or a holster for your cap gun? Remember when you finally got it, how hard you then worked trying to convince your parents you just positively had to sleep in whatever new thing it was? You pleaded. You begged. You played out all of your best kid-brain parent manipulations right up until bedtime, when your parents finally got so worn down and sick of your tricks that they gave you their ok to wear whatever you wanted to sleep in, if you would just get in bed and go the heck to sleep. “But don’t put any caps in your cap gun,” they said. Which, of course, you loaded up with a full roll immediately—even as you were swearing to your parents you would never be so stoopid as to sleep with caps in your cap gun. And remember when you just had to shoot a cap off every so often under the sheets so you could see the spark and smell the smoke? And then one spark got on your new swimming suit and melted a hole in it, while burning you at the same time. And remember how you tried to get out of bed to save yourself from what you thought was an impending house fire, but your bigly moon boots got tangled in your sheets mostly because you were wearing a pair of your dad’s old spurs on them? And then remember how you frantically rolled out of bed and onto the hard floor, because when you were a kid, carpet hadn’t been invented yet? And remember when your dad woke up because of the commotion you were making, and when he walked into your bedroom to check on you he didn’t say a word? He saw you weren’t injured and nothing was on fire, and he put all his effort into trying not to laugh at you in your predicament. He simply turned to go back to bed, holding the back of his garments shut as he chuckled in the kitchen. And remember how you deduced your dad had shared your little fiasco with your mother almost immediately, because five minutes after you were re-situated in your bed, you could hear both your mom and dad laughing. Remember when that happened? Or maybe it only happened to me. Probably more than once.

Anyhoo… I admit right here and now that I have used and abused amazon prime far too much since our lovely pandemic has kept us homebounder-than-usual. But guess what got delivered to me yesterday? My new pair of Hello Kitty sunglasses, which I soooo had to sleep in. Check out the bling on Hello Kitty’s Bow Tie o’ the Night. Best. $4. With. Free. Shipping. Spent. Ever.