A perfect Father's Day with my dad -- If I could........

If I could spend this day all alone with my dad,  I would start it out early in the morning.  He and I would sneak off to buy some delicious donuts from Jimmy's Drive Inn.  They would be hot and dripping in icing - just the way we loved them.

We would jump in his truck and he would drive too fast for my comfort to get us to our next destination.  It would be someplace with water, where we could skip rocks, look for arrowheads and just wander around, while he re-told me stories from his childhood and mine.  We would laugh for hours, both of us throwing our heads back and laughing loudly, till our sides hurt. 

We would lay in the grass and watch the clouds, looking for all kinds of imaginary objects in the white fluffiness floating by and making up stories about what we saw.  Lunch would be at Coach's Corner where we would both eat fried chicken and hot buttered buns, licking our fingers often and talking about how many hundreds of meals we'd eaten there together.  And, of course, there would be an ice cream cone for dessert.

The afternoon hours would be spent looking through photo albums at the thousands of pictures that tell our life story.  I would update him on everything that's been going on and all the changes in our life.   I would tell him how the kids are doing, what a doll Sophie still is, what a little man Keegan is and how we have a new redhead in the family. 

I would tell him how I thought I was going to get to see him last July, but God had other plans and I'm still here.  And I know he would be glad about that.  I know he didn't want to leave his family anymore than I did.

We would grill out for dinner, followed by ice cream, and we would sit around a camp fire during the evening hours.  Maybe we would take turns making up impromptu songs about people we see.  Or maybe, we would just sit in silence, holding hands and letting all of our words just flow from one hand to another.  Those were always some of our best conversations anyway.

And when the evening was done and it was time for him to go home, I would stand there, tears flowing down my cheeks as he walked away, turning to say, "I love you."  And I would be telling him, "I love you, too, Daddy.  I'll see you soon."

And I will.  But sometimes "soon" seems like an awful long time away.

Happy Father's Day, Dad.  I sure do love you and miss you like crazy.