My Dad and The Arrival of Spring

Today has been such a beautiful day. The sun is shining and there isn’t a cloud in the sky. What a way to welcome spring. Today has been a day to enjoy for its beauty and also for me, today has been one to take a look back.

Brit Boy had to go and see a client today and I went along for the ride. We decided last night to make a day out of it. So after he finished his work, we took a drive over to the Cotswolds. We went to that garden centre that I’ve mentioned here before in a very early post. It felt like one of those full circle days since we haven’t gone there for roughly a year since I began my blog. It was nice to go back. I always like going there because the place reminds me of a huge barn and they have gorgeous flowers of every description. They also have beautiful garden furniture, gazebos, and a wide variety of ornamental garden stuff. And then they have all kinds of neat gifty stuff and they have a nice open café there that serves hot and cold food. It’s just a neat place. Anyway, we went by there to get a gift for Brit Boy’s mom. And while we were there we took a look around and had something to eat. I love it when Brit Boy and I have time like this together.

After we ate, we took a good look around. Then I was stopped in my tracks. They have a section with old-fashioned candies and there on a stand was a colorful array of huge lollipops. I used to LOVE these when I was a little girl and I haven’t seen any of them in a long time. The thing is, it was great to see something from my childhood, but what really touched my spirit was that my dad used to buy those for me when I was little. Here’s where I got goose bumps. Today marks the day thirty years ago when my dad passed away. So when I saw these lollipops, I took it as a sign from my dad…like he was saying, “I’m never too far away”. I smiled when I saw them and it brightened my day and lifted my spirits. What a beautiful moment. I would love to talk to him as an adult since I was a child when he passed away, but over the years I’ve found a certain amount of peace and I keep good thoughts of him and my mom in my mind. I loved the lollipop so much that I had to buy one (smile). Here it is.




As we were driving out of the parking lot, I snapped this photo of a wicker type man they have out front. He is very earthy looking…don’t you think? I love him.




And also I took a picture of a lovely spot on the way back home. All of the daffodils and trees are blooming out.




When we got home, we went out into our backyard and I took some photos of our pretty little flowers that are coming alive. We planted these bulbs back in the dead of winter and now they are showing off all of their colorful beauty and they are the essence of life.




So as I mentioned at the beginning of this post, today was a day of the beautiful, the bittersweet, the joyous, and things came full circle. Even though this is the anniversary of the day when my father passed, all that I could feel was the joy in the fact that he had lived and he was my dad and he loved me and I loved him. I’m reminded that there is joy in life around us every day and through me and my siblings…my parents live on :-)

Being the Baby

Yesterday I wrote about my brother Tim and it drew my thoughts to my family. As I said yesterday, my brother Tim would have been fifty-eight this year and it blows my mind that he would be that age now, since I always remember him in his forties, which was when he died. I come from a rather big family. I am “the baby” as we used to say back home. I am the youngest of my parents’ kids. I have another brother and four sisters. All of them are much closer in age and I was born quite a few years later.

My brother Tim was the second child after my eldest sister. They were only a year apart. My mother was in her late teens when she married, so this is how it worked out that I had siblings who are quite a bit older than me. I used to work in a pharmacy years back when I was about nineteen. We lived in a small town so everybody knew everybody. And many times I would have customers who would come through the line and see a family resemblance that I don’t see. (smile) They would usually be former classmates of my eldest brother and sister and they would always ask which one of them was my parent. I would have to tell them that neither one was my parent and that actually I was their little sister. They would always say, “I didn’t ever know about you. I thought that youngest boy was the last one. Where did you come from?” Now what was I supposed to say to that? (laugh) It could’ve given me a complex or something, but I just usually shrugged it off and laughed and said something like, “Well I guess the stork dropped me when you weren’t looking.” I used to tell my sister all the time that someone else thought I was her kid and she would say, “Now those folks know that I wasn’t pregnant back then.” And we would laugh about it.

So it has always just been one of those things in my life…people thinking that one of my siblings is my parent. (laugh) My mom used to laugh and say to me, “Well since everybody thinks you are one of theirs I guess that you should start calling me Granny.”

My siblings came like this: sister, my brother Tim, sister, brother (stillborn), sister, sister, and brother. And then I came quite a few years after my last brother. I am more of a contemporary of some of their kids age-wise, so my older nieces and nephews seem more like cousins to me. I grew up with them. My eldest niece is only five years younger than me. It’s kinda cool.

In writing about all of this, I had a thought about my mother. She was made of some strong stuff, because she had to endure the death of two children. As the saying always goes, no parent should have to bury their child. I just think about the fact that she had one of my brother’s stillborn and then she buried my other brother. I know that many mothers and fathers bury their children everyday under terrible circumstances and it just must be excruciating. I see all of the terrible tragedies of the world on the news with parents losing their children and it just breaks your heart for them. Burying a child, no matter the circumstances, is just so antithetical to nature.

So anyway, that’s my story of being the baby. Incidentally, Brit Boy is the baby of his family too, although his is less than half the size of mine. So Brit Boy and I are in solidarity with the baby thing. We always joke that hey, our respective families simply saved the best for last. (laugh) Just kidding. Although I think that Brit Boy and I both came last because we like to arrive fashionably late. (smile)