Father's Day: Happy and Sad

I've had a nice Father's Day. Went to a Quaker picnic with my son. He and I both have casts on our left feet. Mine's due to come off this week, since the three stress fractures are healed. His is for a sprain, and he'll wear it for a week. Like father, like son. It was a fun day. My son ate a brownie and some strawberry shortcake. I made a feeble attempt to get him to eat some "real" food! You know, being a dad. I don't know if he did, but he seems to be growing anyway.

Watching the Cubs today. They are losing to the Padres, 9-1. I was reflecting how I used to watch these games with my dad. It was a place where we could hang out, the baseball world, Wrigley Field. Watching the Cubs struggle was part of our lives together. I miss him today, not just because of baseball. He died 5 years ago on my birthday. He had emphysema from being a life-long smoker. But I feel there's a lot more we could have shared. I also wish he and my son, Poodledoc, Jr, would have had more time together. Of course, we had some tough times, disagreeing a lot on politics, mostly. But that seems so trivial now. Not what we needed to be talking about.

But I'm really missing him today. At his funeral, I sat at the traditional post-funeral luncheon in Springfield, NE, at the Methodist Church, amongst his surviving high school classmates. Out of 15, there were 8 present. They showed me a framed class of 1944 photo. They told me that when one of them would die, the program from the funeral/memorial service would be put into a pocket on the back of the frame. They asked me for the program. I handed it over, even though they all had copies. It was some kind of ritual, I think. The son handing over the father's honor, or something like that.

Later, there was a lot of laughter. I felt very at home with these people. They grew up with my dad and loved him. I asked them for some remembrances of my dad. One of his classmates said: "I've never seen ANYONE throw a baseball that far".