One in a Million

After leaving school early to help on the family farm, Dad worked as a laborer for much of his life. When his workplace was close to home, each lunch hour, he trudged back to share the noon meal with Mom and us two growing children. Protecting the sofa, he took a quick nap on the short-piled living room rug. Each night, in the back woodshed, he changed from the clothing soured by his foundry work. He donned clean clothes for the house. He scrubbed and scrubbed his hands with Snap, a gritty pumice soap, attempting to remove the black imbedded in his skin.

Despite his heavy labor, he always made time for each of us. Up early each morning, he took tea to Mom in bed to start her working day well. In winter, I’d hear him “shaking down” and taking out the ashes, preparing the coal and wood stove for the day.

On Saturdays, he worked on house repairs and chores. When we were younger, Mom and Dad, my brother Bill and I, would walk to the library, lugging home as many books as we could, then sit in the living room as a family, reading and reading. Saturday evenings, we played card and board games and crokinole together. Dad was a whiz. He really knew how to play the angles, but he encouraged us to do our best and never cared whether he actually won.

Or, rising early, and walking along the tracks to the old iron bridge, we’d all go fishing, taking the Mom-packed lunches. While she read, avoiding the cow-pies and sitting beyond the wild roses, Dad would put the worms on the hooks of our bamboo fishing pole lines and help us to take off the fish when we caught them. If too well-hooked to return to the river, sunfish were killed and kept for garden fertilizer. If big enough, bass were taken home to be eaten. Once, my Dad calmly removed my hook from my brother’s ear lobe after my overly-enthusiastic rod-wielding.

He taught us which tree gum we could chew, how to recognize trees by their bark, plants by their leaves. He taught me how to swim and jump off his shoulders to dive. I, in turn, encouraged my younger brother.

On Sundays, we walked to church. Then, from spring to fall, we would hike “around the mile” or out to the Third Bush with its large “thinking rock” in the nearby countryside, or go for a picnic and picking sun-filled wild strawberries. Dad taught us which snakes were dangerous. (My mother thought they all were and one day, stood petrified, her bouquet of wild flowers dropped on the ground, waiting for Dad to hear her screams and rescue her.)

He taught us how to shoot our Dad-made arrows at tin cans from Dad-made bows, how to walk on our Dad-made wooden stilts, how to use the penknives Mom wasn’t sure we should have, how to skate on our Dad-made backyard rink with a single light bulb stretched over it on a clothesline. He didn’t have to tell us how to climb the snow steps and slide down the icy slide he’d made and flooded for us and our friends.

When his education had been cut off, Dad had been hoping to become a doctor or a vet. All our neighbors knew where to bring pets or children in distress. Once, near midnight, Dad removed BB pellets from the nose of my friend’s dog. He helped with another skunk-surprised dog. One time, he removed porcupine quills. He cleaned our infected knee-scrapes with peroxide and healed them with poultices of washed backyard plantain and removed our slivers. Aches, pains or bee-stings? Our Dad would make it better.

Dad took night classes in woodworking to make desks and bookshelves for each of us. He played mental math and word games with us. He wrote poetry and took a geology course and a short story writing course. He resoled our shoes and put delightful “clickers” on my heels. I was a tap dancer!

The year Mom broke her shoulder, Dad washed her long hair for her weekly, and his thicker fingers rolled the fiddly curlers and end-papers to give me the annual home permanent Mom usually provided. One year when Dad was in and out of hospital, I proudly kept up the flourishing vegetable garden he’d coaxed from resistant clay, but only he could raise the beautiful roses strangers came by to see.

Elford – 1000 p.3

Dad and I always accompanied my friends to their homes after my birthday parties. When I became old enough for Saturday night Teen Town dances across town, my father would amble over shortly before the ending time. He would chat with the fellows just inside the doors. He liked them and they respected him, and therefore, me. If someone were walking me home, Dad would return by a different way, so as not to interfere with my social life. If I were with girlfriends, Dad would escort us. We were grateful for his presence.

Dad taught the teen-aged boys in Sunday School, apparently making a realistic deal with them, “You listen to me for the first part of the lesson. I promise you 15 minutes at the end for discussing sports.” He always kept his word.

Dad took leadership roles in the PTA. He and Mom attended every school production in which I had a part, from kindergarten to high school graduation. Lacking a car, they still proudly made it to my graduation from Teachers’ College, and from University. But by the time I received my degree in theology and joined my husband in ministry, my father had already died.

Now, as a minister myself, my heart aches when I recall how my dad refused an invitation from his congregation to become a church elder. He didn’t think he was “good enough”. He was so wrong. Faith and selflessness were all that was needed. He had them both in abundance, along with large doses of joy and humility.

He was one in a million. And I was lucky to be his daughter.