Dad’s Off Playing With His Dogs In Heaven

Santa-hatted canines abound, covering Bow Tie o’ the Day and Ties o’ the Day. Dad was not just a bee guy. He was not just a holder of any nearby baby. My late dad was also a dog man.

Especially after Dad semi-retired, he was always seen with a mutt companion riding in the back of his truck. He was partial to Labrador Retrievers, like the one here wrapped up in a string of Christmas lights. This Golden Lab resembles the last few dogs Dad had in his life. He had only one dog at a time, but somehow the dogs all looked exactly alike.

Seriously, Dad’s dogs didn’t look alike in the sense of being of the same breed. Nope. They just all looked alike. Exactly alike.  And I mean, exactly. Dad inadvertently made it even more complicated for us to keep the dogs straight in our memories because he named his dogs the same names. If the dog was a female, he named it Becky. If it was a male, he named it Bert. I guess by the time Dad was choosing the dogs of his later years, he didn’t want to be bothered to remember new names. I do think he’s the only person who truly knew the separate souls of each of his clone-like mutts.

I’m glad Dad knew I was a baby, and not a puppy, when I was born. He would have named me Becky. Instead, he named me Helen Eileen (see that story in an earlier post). I suppose you could say I was kind of Dad’s puppy for the first six months of my life, though. Mom went through Hell giving birth to me and she was not well enough to mother me for a few months, so my dad was also my mom. (The original MR. MOM?)

My sisters helped take care of me. My grandparents helped. But mostly, I was in Dad’s arms. As I understand it, I spent a lot of time cooing and crying and napping in his bee truck while he worked in the bee yards– from Richfield to St. George to Payson to Heber and back to Delta again.

To hear Mom tell it, Dad was so concerned about her health, and he treated her with such tenderness that he wouldn’t even allow her to lift a finger to change my diaper for the first six months of my life. Now that’s probably a bigly bit of an exaggeration. It’s likely a tall tale. But Dad was tall, and many tales have been told about him. He was mythical in his own way, imperfections and all. Dad was not perfect, but he was perfectly Dad. In his way, he was a true myth I know by heart.

HOLIDAY TIE TALLY: 31 Bow ties. 82 Neckties.