Father's Day

This week I was reminded of a very old memory shared between my Dad and I so journey back to the 1980s for a few minutes with me...

The year is 1983 and it is a Saturday afternoon in Minnesota.

The sunshine was warm and the air had a nice cool breeze. My parents and I were out in the yard busy bringing a dream of mine to life...an orchard! Earlier in the week my Dad had taken a day off work to spend it with me and we had found several fruit trees at a discount. The original plan for the day had been to go see Superman III at the theater after having lunch at my favorite burger place, Fudruckers. That plan went out the window when we found the trees. Dad gave me a choice...the movie or my orchard. I picked the trees.  I was going to have an orchard just like Anne from the Green Gables books!  The trees were bought and we returned home to get our big red truck so we could bring the trees back to the house.  Excitement filled me until the weekend arrived and we could begin to dig the great big holes those five trees would require. I was eight years old and underfoot at every turn trying to be very helpful on that Saturday afternoon. So much so that when my Dad began to fill in a hole the shovel handle came back and caught me in the nose. Oh the pain! And the tears! And the bloody nose. Now I knew the moment it happened this was all my fault. I was eight but not dumb. I shouldn't have been standing behind Dad. He didn't know I was there. Dad being Dad helped Mom fix me up and such as well as saw my earlier excitement was dashed. Restoring that excitement became his goal and he told me he would give me anything. Do you know what I asked for in that instant? Not a toy. Not candy. I asked if he would let me go up on the roof of the house. He had let me the previous summer and I remembered from there I could see all the way to downtown Minneapolis to my favorite skyscraper, the IDS Tower, and I wanted to do it again. He got the ladder and followed me up telling me to be careful but not too careful because accidents happen that way too. There I stayed for the rest of that afternoon as I watched them finish my orchard. It was that day that I knew my Mom had to be the smartest woman ever because she married a real Superman.

I believe all these years later he still is Superman and that my Mom is the smartest woman ever for marrying him.

Happy Father's Day to Superman...my Superman.

This is the song we are dancing to in that photo above and it is one of his favorites.