13.6.10

Happy what-would-be-your-42nd-anniversary

June 13th is my parents' anniversary.  I didn't greet my Mom 'Happy Anniversary' today as I'd already done so when we last saw her for our weekly dinner this past Wednesday, and she said not to remind her. Mom placed her hand affectionately on Dad's wooden urn and said, S. says happy anniversary.  


Dad's birthday followed by their anniversary followed by our anniversary followed by Father's Day.  Rough (?) June.  It's all good, I suppose, with nieces' and nephews' birthdays thrown into the mix too.  


Oh, how I do miss my Dad . . . I've found myself more than once in the past couple of weeks just smiling and feeling overwhelmed by certain memories -- whether I'm on my bus commute or trying to get through my next five minutes of running on the treadmill at the gym.  How he made me get up at 6am to learn how to play tennis.  At 11, I hated tennis as I was the most unathletic person.  While Dad had his own commitments, he made sure to show up at my high school musicals no matter how small a part I had (I was often just a chorus girl) and then would say how I was so much like him since he enjoyed participating in his high school zarzuelas too.  Despite his plea for me to go into the medical or law fields, he was supportive of my writing and pursuit of journalism.  He'd often ask me to be a guest columnist for his Knight of Columbus or Narvacanean publications.  And despite my fiercely independent nature as a young adult, Dad eventually came around and accepted that he and Mom had raised me to be extremely self-reliant (13 years of an all-girls school will do that), so it was okay that I wanted to live alone in my very own one-bedroom apartment at 22.    


I am lovingly appreciative of the life my Dad and Mom have given me.  I often wonder what my Dad would say to us as we are in our adoption process, what kind of parental advice he'd give us whether we asked for it or not and what fatherly guidance he'd offer to A. as a father-in-waiting . . . how excited he might be to be waiting with us.  How he'd tell us more than once how blessed we are to have experienced parents at all since sadly he, the youngest of seven, didn't grow up with his mother and father and had been raised by his older siblings.      


This upcoming August will mark two years since Dad's been gone . . . Thank you, Dad, for staying with me.