Happy Father’s Day

Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there!

I want to share one of my favorite memories of my dad. It’s one I share with my sisters because it was part of our bedtime routine when we stayed with him. 

If you have kids you know bedtime can be challenging, especially when kids are young.

What I remember most about bedtime with my dad is the stories he would tell. He would tell us Cowboy Moe and Cowboy Joe stories. They were captivating stories full of danger and adventure. The memory is beautiful, makes me smile, and it is one I will cherish forever. 

The stories weren’t so much about Moe and Joe, as they were about a little girl calf, and sometimes a little boy calf, who would find themselves in difficult situations, much like my sisters and I were experiencing. 

My dad would grab his guitar and softly begin to strum an old familiar cowboy tune. It always made me think of a cowboy on a horse slowly rocking from side to side in his saddle, as he sauntered across the barren desert. 

The stories, unbeknownst to us, were created as a way of having difficult conversations about safety, values and general life skills.

The calves were always finding themselves in precarious situations, working together to get out of them, sometimes making it back to the herd unscathed and no one the wiser and sometimes they would be rescued with a short lecture from the mama cow.

I do remember my dad asking us what we thought would happen, and putting that in the story or talking through why it would need to go differently. 

Today, I couldn’t tell you the details of a single story he told us, and yet, I can remember exactly what those moments felt like. They felt like love.

My dad moved to Atlanta when we were young and the visits became rare and eventually just stopped. My sisters and I became teenagers and young adults, attending college and/or getting jobs, eventually adulting and having children of our own. There were and still are many conversations about those cowboy moe and cowboy joe stories and how much we loved that special time with our dad.

Over the years, our dad mentioned that he had begun to create stories in his head for our children, his grandchildren. He said he would think about these stories while driving long distances for work, and that someday he would write them down.

Well we all know what happens to “someday”, it never comes. 

You know I’m not exactly sure when my dad was diagnosed with Alzhiemer’s and Parkinson’s, but I believe it was sometime around 2017 or 18. 

Well as luck would have it, in 2019, I was working for a company that required me to travel to Atlanta pretty much every other month. This lucky turn of events gave me the opportunity to spend a good amount of time with my dad and a good amount of time to listen to his stories. 

Now, for those of you who don’t know my dad, he is, at his core, a big kid, with a very curious mind, and one of the best laughs I’ve ever heard. He would get frustrated when talking about politics, nostalgic when talking about his college days and how he and his friends were curious to see what would happen if you put a lighter to someone's ass when they farted. 

And he always got excited when we talked about the grandkids, what they were doing, and what they were into. 

So one night when we were sitting around talking, the stories for the kids came up. He began telling me about this story he created with all the kids in it, and made me swear to never share it because someday, he was going to publish it. I have to admit, I am still sad that I didn’t think fast enough to record that story and conversation, because it was a great one.

I did, however, grab my phone when he said the next story was about my daughter. I hit the record button and listened to the story he created for my daughter. It still had bits that needed to be worked out, and he shared how he thought it might go, but overall it was a wonderful story of a strong young woman, who worked hard for what she believed in. The best part about this story is that it was a story he had created for my daughter. A book he had wanted to write, someday.

He quickly rolled into the next story, and I had to grab my phone, stop that recording and hit record again for the next story. This one was about my son, who is an avid star wars fan and computer gamer, which my dad assumed made him nerdy. So it was a story about him and his nerdy friends solving world problems and inventing new technologies.

I think we took a small break to eat a chocolate doughnut or a chocolate chip cookie, my dad does love his sweets, something I too can’t get enough of! 

The next story had both of my sisters' kids in it and it was all about working together to create something unique, something that had never been thought of before. It, like all the stories, wasn’t complete and had bits that still needed to be worked out or thought through. And like all the stories, it too would be written someday.

Well a couple of weeks ago, while working on the podcast I found the recordings and thought today is someday. Today is the day I fix the audio, adjust the sound, take out the background noises and put his stories out as MP3’s for all the kids (and my sisters) to enjoy. I sent them off knowing they will be out there for our kids and their kids to enjoy and connect with the great granddad they will never know, except through his stories.

I had no idea how special those stories were about to become. 

Just this week I called my dad to wish him an early Happy Fathers Day. Only to find out that his Parkinson's is progressing and the Alzhiemers is beginning to take a toll. His voice is soft and frail and if he talks too much it causes him to start coughing. He no longer drives, because he can’t always tell his legs what to do. He has fallen and is now doing some walking therapy to help with his balance. And he is still eating his favorite chocolate donuts everyday.

As we talked, I mentioned that I had, without him knowing, recorded the stories he had created for the kids, during my last visit with him in 2019. He said, What stories? My heart sank, and I did my best to remind him of the stories he had created for his grandchildren. He had no idea what I was talking about. He said, I remember the cowboy moe and cowboy joe stories I used to tell you girls when you were little. And then he began to go through the names of the characters and how the scenes were created based on the lessons we needed to hear or learn. 

Today, those stories are in the hands of the people they were created for, and who knows, maybe they will turn them into books…Someday.