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Family Values
by James Glaser July 9, 2007 I should have written this on Father's Day, but the memory didn't hit me until this last Saturday. I was parked outside of a fast food restaurant waiting for Wanda who was inside getting us some sweet tea. It was in the high nineties Saturday, and we had just spent a while in an unconditioned antique shop on highway 331, south of DeFuniak Springs, Florida. We had the auto AC on high, but still we needed something cold to hydrate with, and tea sounded good to both of us. So, there I am waiting in the car, and next to us is I am guessing a father and son waiting for the rest of the family to get out to their car. The boy looked to be about ten, and he and his dad were talking and joking around. I couldn't hear what they were saying with the windows closed, but the smiles on their faces and their body language gave me this snapshot of a father and son who were close to each other. Soon the boy's mother and sisters came out, and they had to get back in their car, and I could see the boy smiling as he got in the back seat and his dad got in the front. We are talking of about two or three minutes that the two of them were playing this silent movie clip for me as I waited for Wanda. They were just a father and son joking around with each other in the parking lot of a fast food restaurant, but the memories that those two brought back to me about some of the times I spent with my dad made me feel good. That family left, and I sat there thinking about a time that my dad and I went to one of his softball games. Just he and I, not my sisters, just the two of us. I am sure that my dad didn't think of that time at the ballgame as special, heck I don't know that my sisters didn't have something special to do that day with my mom. I just remember being there with my dad and his friends. In fact, I was the only kid there, and that made it even better. Wanda came back with the sweet tea, and we started back to Tallahassee. I drove north of the Interstate for a few miles and picked up Highway 90. That is the old highway that crosses the state just below the Georgia border. If you are driving down memory lane in a car on a holiday weekend it is better to get off the freeway and get on a 55 MPH roadway. Now that I think about it, those few minutes watching that father and son gave me a whole afternoon thinking about so many good times with my dad. You usually have your kids for eighteen years, but the first five they never remember and the last five they are trying to get away, so that leaves you about eight years to form a real life-long bond. Those little moments with your child when they are between five and thirteen are the ones they will remember the rest of their lives. One time my dad and I drove up to Grand Rapids to see his older brother, my Uncle John. Always the whole family would go up there together, but this time it was just dad and I. Now get this, half way up we stopped at Big Sandy Lake, and we camped out. Dad was in WWII, and I know he got more than his share of camping back then. I had no idea he knew how to cook a whole meal in one pot, and I didn't know you could wash the pans and dishes by scrubbing them with sand down by the lake. . . but my dad sure did. We had a great time. Maybe I had a better time than my dad did, and let me tell you that to this day I can show you where we parked the car, (a green 55' Ford station wagon and we slept in the back) where we had the fire, and that we had bacon and eggs for breakfast. Also, we cleaned up the camp ground before we left. What a wonderful memory. I could go on with a lot of "shorts" about time with my dad, but that isn't why I am writing this. I am writing this in hopes that some other dad or mother, who has a son or daughter between the age of five and thirteen reads this and learns that time spent with their children on a one on one basis will live in that child's memory for decades. Not everyone can leave their children a lot of money or a piece of land, but they can leave them with a memory of a gift of their time and love, and really there isn't much that is more valuable than that. |
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