Though it boggles my mind that it’s June already, this month has started out exactly the way Hallmark advertising depicts it will. Many of us will be celebrating a graduation, an anniversary of sorts, or wedding, a birthday, a bat-mitzvah or bar mitzvah, and of course, Father’s Day is fast approaching.
My niece, Ashley, graduated from high school and my nephew, Ryan, celebrated getting his GED. Since my family lives on the west coast, I wasn’t able to be there. Therefore, I’ve enjoyed most of these events vicariously and almost blow-by-blow through phone calls, text messaging, and digital camera uploads on the computer.
The anniversary of sorts, I mentioned, is because a woman never forgets her wedding day. In spite of divorce, or other unforeseen circumstances, that is a day in a woman’s life that is imprinted in her mind for all time. This year, mixed up in the middle of the week of graduation celebrations, marks forty-two years that I would have been married had my life turned out differently. That sounds like such a long time though, as I’m sure no one would believe I was that old. Don’t they say that today being sixtish is more like being fortish?
I marvel at the adaptability of my ninety-four year-old stepfather, “Pop”. I think of the example he has both set and consistently lived during the thirty-four years he was married to my mother before her elevation to Heaven, last summer. As the patriarch of our family, I stand amazed at the hurdles he’s crossed over the span of his life. He comes from a generation of strong stock with a seemingly unspoken silent code of no matter what happens you just keep going.
Over the course of my life with “Pop” I wasn’t the only one interested in his stories. When my children were young they would gather round with their cousins and together we’d all listen as he shared his adventures of a young boy growing up in Missouri and then riding the rails out west. He and his friends were regular Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn’s of the 1930’s.
The one story we all loved was hearing about his days of riding the rails and how he and his friends hoped on train cars whipping down the tracks. We were awed by his life in the fast lane and the daring and dangerous habits of his gang of ruffians. They weren’t bad; just young, naïve, and adventurous…and they wanted to get out of Missouri.
They spent a spell in Wyoming working in Yellowstone, and though he liked it there, they were now hearing about work out in Santa Paula, California. So, off they went again.
“Pop” settled in Visalia, right smack in the center of California in the San Joaquin Valley, known for growing fruits and vegetables. A farmer, he built a ranch on property he bought and lived there for fifty years working his ranch while also raising a family, and working full time for the Edison Company. As a widower, he met and married my mother, a widow. They worked along side each other at the ranch irrigating doing other chores and still managed to travel the world and even went through the Panama Canal on one trip.
In his eighty’s, prompted by the eternal inquiries about his life from the family, “Pop” wrote his life story on the computer making it into a binder book (with photos) for the family. In his early 90’s he had knee surgery, first on one knee and then later on the other knee. Though “Pop” isn’t jumping trains anymore and walks with a cane now, he continues to set an example of how to make it through the tough times in life.
We all want “Pop” to live to be 100 so that we can contact Willard Scott on NBC and have his picture pasted on the Smucker’s Jelly Jar. Regardless of what the days ahead bring, this Father’s Day my thoughts focus on my dad and his strength, determination to keep going, and his inspiring smile.
Like the grains of the sand that silently slip through the hourglass, “Pop” has taught me there is no time to linger on the past, but to keep celebrating today, and the future.
