Dear Dad,
Thank you for working so damn hard for all of us every single day. Thank you for being such a wonderful storyteller. Thank you for singing and laughing and barbecuing and making sink sandwiches and kneeling in prayer every night. Thank you for “Anh anh, ea-sy, ooh ooh” and “All I want is ladies!” and “What’s the chill factor?” Thank you for teaching me to drive and loving the ocean and the beach. Thank you for being smart and funny and a voracious reader and for hanging my Religion Award in a place of honor in the kitchen. Thank you for teaching me my times tables and for helping me to see the patterns and for giving me the cheat I still use for the sevens. Thank you for dinners in the basement and in the garage to celebrate after you and I had cleaned them. Thank you for taking me for pony rides at Roger Williams Park and for Del’s Lemonade. Thank you for explaining what a mile long hot dog was and showing the teenage boys how to wrap their beer cans in aluminum foil. Thank you for planting tomatoes every Memorial Day and weeping with me when we had to cut down the Rose of Sharon. Thank you for getting me my red ten speed bike with the sales points you’d earned and for letting me ride it all over two towns all the time. Thank you for saying how beautiful I looked in my wedding dress and for wanting me to take it back as soon as you found out we had paid next to nothing for it. Thank you for walking me down the aisle even though it was to marry the wrong man. Thank you for saying I love you and for big hugs and watching Johnny Carson in the living room in the dark. Thank you for being humble and quiet and for being fierce and bold for your family. Thank you for driving us everywhere to get the best views of the ocean and for saying “Sign? What sign?” as we ventured down roads marked private. Thank you for standing in the middle of all those police officers and then kicking the front bumper back into place and then telling me I should still go to the dance after the accident. Thank you for hauling my stuff back and forth to college and checking under the station wagon to make sure it wasn’t dragging on the ground. Thank you for being so damn proud of me when I made Dean’s List every semester in college and for letting me get away with lousy grades in high school just because my conduct scores were “A”s. Thank you for teaching me how to frame and take a photograph and for calling rock and roll music “ker-plunk, ker-plunk, ker-plunka”. Thank you for Lawn Darts and for sharing your Heinekens with my best friends. Thank you for telling me I could stay at the house when my marriage was falling apart and for hugging me so hard when I said no, I had to go back. Thank you for doing “It Pays To Increase Your Word Power” with me and helping me with my project on the SDS. Thank you for laughing wicked hard while punching me firmly in the shoulder when I sang you that mildly scandalous musical joke I made up. Thank you for sneaking over to watch me hawk cheese samples in the mall and and for teaching me how to lay a fire in the fireplace. Thank you for grounding me that one time and sitting with me the next night as we cried together about all of it. Thank you for rescuing those baby robins and for bringing up the worms with the laundry pole and for celebrating when their parents took them back and for being heartbroken when one of them didn’t survive. Thank you for teaching me what love means.
I love you Dad.
I miss you Dad.
We all do.
Love,
Lee
