Local writers share their Father's Day stories

Florist's daughter

Give others their mansions trimmed with silver and gold, But I owned a tree house when I was only six years old!

By Georgeanna Carter

Dear Daddy,

I remember all the loving, thoughtful little things you did through the years for my sisters and me. Most of all I remember that wonderful treehouse high in an apple tree that you built just for me.

You found me crying in the dark of the dirt floor cellar where you kept your bulbs and plants to set out in the spring. I was crying because Mama wouldn't let me play in my sister's treehouse because it had no railing and I was only 6 years old.

You took me in your arms and hugged me while I cried, "I'm tired of being so little! I want to get old fast and play in Nell's treehouse."

You looked at me with a glimmer of tears in your eyes and said, "You shouldn't say that. You should be glad you are young and have your whole life before you."

Then you added, "I remember when I was a little boy just your age. I was jumping over plowed furrows of a field with my dog Rover at my heels. It was my 6th birthday. I said to myself, 'I want to always be just six years old! I was so filled with the joy of being young.'"

"Come on," you commanded, "let's get out of this dark cellar. You can help me build a safe treehouse just for you." This we did. When my sisters climbed into it, you sawed off the two lower branches and gave me a rope ladder to pull up after me so no one could visit without my permission.

I still cherish the hours I spent there, reading books through the long summer. I placed them in a basket and hauled them up to my tree house with a rope.

I could peek between the leafy boughs and see you weeding acres of peonies and iris. Such a safe, secure feeling I have seldom found in this volatile world.

You also gave me a lifetime gift. You introduced me to poetry, both your own and that written by others. It became therapy for everything that happened to me, good or bad. Here is a poem I wrote for you which did much to help heal my sorrow at your passing,

"Florist/s daughter"

You left me no legacy
of silver or gold
to barter through the years.
Instead, memories of peonies
and iris, daffodils and tulips,
and how you dried my childish
tears, hoe in hand,
love upon your face.

Memories of Daddy

By Shirley Pressley

In spring when the sap was rising, Daddy would slip the bark from a piece of willow to make a whistle for us kids. Jointed pieces of rye stems slit in just the right way made a different kind of whistle.

Popguns were made from branches of elderberry bushes, which grew along creek banks. Wooden spools whittled down and inserted with a sharpened piece of dowel made dandy tops to spin on a table or smooth linoleum floor.

We entertained ourselves with these tops, whistles, popguns and with whizzers, which he made with a flat piece of wood tied to a cord. These were swung round and round making a whizzing noise.

Stilts were made from scrap lumber, and we played many hours on them, learning to balance and walking with them all over the yard and barnyard.

By lamplight he showed us how to make Jacob's ladders and seesaws with twine. A bug button from Mama's sewing machine drawer added to the string made a zizzer.

Who needed store-bought toys? We didn't have any, but, were none the worse off for that because somebody at our house was a master at making homemade toys. That somebody was my Daddy.

Go ahead - Send that card anyway

By Sandy Serjak

What do you do when it's Father's Day and the Hallmark cards are all written for the kind of father you never had? Do you stick your head in the sand (also known as taking the high road) and send the card anyway?

You know, the kind of card that says how he was always there for you, how he made you feel safe and loved, and how you forever after modeled every man in your life after the example he set. Do you look at card after card, hoping to find one that works? Do you settle for a funny card showing a dad doing whatever sport always seemed more worthwhile to him than you did?

Do you hide the hurt that comes to the surface this time every year, and pick out one with an innocuous message like, "Hope you have the kind of day you deserve" and hope he doesn't read between the lines? Do you allow yourself to admit that you're still angry even though he's now an old man and all that indifference was so long ago, or do you stuff it down one more time, go ahead and buy the card for the "Father Knows Best" dad and send it anyway?

The Bible says, "Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land which the Lord your God gives you." It's often been called the first commandment with a promise.

Over all these years I've never been able to put into words my mixed feelings about my father. I've honored him all my life, but now have gotten so tired of just trying to keep the relationship going. He lives far away from here, and I don't see him much any more. When I do, we trade empty catch phrases and there is a longing in me for it all to have been different, but it's not. Sometimes, I see that emptiness in his eyes for the way his life has turned out. But I know now that I can no longer be the one to fill him up. Only God can do that. All my life, no one could fill me up until I asked God to fill me. It will be the same for Dad. We are children with a heavenly father, and He, as someone once said, is the only parent who ever got it right.

So go ahead, send a card and honor your father on Father's Day and say a little prayer before you send it. Maybe put a little note inside. Forgive as you have been forgiven, and do the best you can with your own children and grandchildren. Get on with your life and enjoy the days which the Lord your God gives you.

My Uncle Jack

By Pearl E. Tait

The closest I have come to having a father was my Uncle Jack. Perhaps he gave me the best part of fatherhood. He never scolded, disciplined or lectured, but only taught me to laugh.

Born in Switzerland, my uncle, at the age of 11, became the head of a household of five sisters and an invalid mother. He provided for the family by tending cows in the summer pastures of the Swiss Alps, raising rabbits and snails, picking potatoes, and taking any job a young boy was given. At 18, he left for America with $50 in his pocket and a medical diagnosis of six months to live. But he survived, helped two sisters come to America, and met a fellow Swiss who fell in love with my mother's photograph and brought her to America as well.

After hard years, the families prospered and bought adjoining summer homes on a lake at the foot of Bear Mountain in New Jersey. It was there, in the summers of my youth, that my uncle taught me how to laugh.

On weekends, when my uncle, my mother and their sister, Tanta Josie, left the heat of the city, to join Tanta Min, my uncle's wife, who took care of my brother and me, and her two daughters during the week, we would gather on Saturday evenings for dinner around the trestle table on my unclešs screened porch. Tanta Min would end the meal with my uncle's favorite desert - a two-layered angel food cake with slices of fresh ripe Georgia peaches in between the layers, juice soaking into the cake covered with mounds of whipped cream and trimmed with more rosy-yellow peach slices. Over coffee for the grown-ups and milk for the children, the uncle and aunts would reminisce about the old days.

My uncle taught all four of us to swim. As he felt we were ready, he would allow us to swim out to the big raft in the deep water, swimming next to each one of us until he was satisfied that we were capable of swimming alone. Then he taught us to dive off the raft and when we had mastered that, he took us to the dam to dive. He treaded water until each one of us gathered the courage to dive from the dizzyingly height of three feet.

When my mother bought a canoe for us, it was my uncle who showed us how to step in the middle of the canoe to keep it balanced. He taught us how to paddle, and then with a great, ridiculous show, he tipped the canoe over and taught us how to right it, empty the water, and climb in. When we passed the test, my cousin and I were in the canoe all day with no thought or concern from the aunts. He taught us well, and secure in our abilities, he gave us the freedom to explore the world as children will, through the long summer days.

Sometimes in the winter, we would drive up to the lake, sweep the snow off the ice and go ice skating. Even the aunts did this well. Once, when the ice was thick and the strong wind had swept the snow off the width of the lake, my uncle had the idea of using blanket as a sail. My uncle, the aunts and the children each grabbed anedge and held the blanket up to the wind. Away we flew, covering ice with the speed of a train until we hit a crusty patch of ice and we fell every which way laughing with the thrill of it.

When we went off to college, found jobs, and raised families, we drifted apart. I spent my years in other countries or western states far from the northeast, so I rarely saw my uncle and brief Christmas cards were our only contact. When he was in his eighties, we finally met again at my mother's summer house in North Carolina. My uncle had very little vision, a hearing loss, and had difficulty walking, but he had the same keen mind and wit.

We went for a walk together. I can still feel his trembling hand holding my arm for support and guidance. We talked. I told him how I missed my husband and how I worried about raising my two young sons.

'I don't worry about you, ' my uncle said, 'you are a survivor. You were always the first to take the dive, you rode your bicycle the farthest and the fastest. You will be all right."

His words were a comfort. But as we talked, I told him, 'Uncle, you have to take better care of yourself: Everyone is very worried."

In the way families communicate, I knew that he was in trouble. He was not a poor man. In those days he would probably have been considered wealthy. But he could not spend money on himself. 'Uncle," I said, 'you have enough money and your daughters and their grandchildren are all doing well. You can buy nice things for yourself and take better care of yourself."

'You know, Pearl. That is something I just can't do. I can give thousands of dollars to my children and grandchildren, but I find it hard to spend a penny on myself." Those early years of deprivation had marked my uncle indelibly as it has, to a lesser degree, marked all the sisters.

A few more years passed when I heard that the daughters had decided to bring my uncle to a nursing home in Texas. It was a very lovely nursing home, but my mother who went to help him settle in, told the daughters, 'He will never live here. He will die." and within two months he was dead.

When I left the summer house never to return, it wasn't an event, it just happened casually. I look back and I realize that in all those years I never told my Uncle Jack how important he was to me, how much joy and laughter he gave me, how he trained me to face trouble with humor. I can only hope that in some way, he knew.