life is a highway and I’m in the passing lane going 35 with my left blinker on

my Dad would be proud. His van is still on the road, driven by my brother’s whatever you call her. It’s still got it’s war wounds from the last year of Dad driving. He actually managed to hit the same pole in an empty bank parking lot … twice. He was telling us he wasn’t driving but the neighbor told me she’d hear him start the van up and go driving down the road and she’d keep her fingers crossed until he got home. I’m glad I didn’t have to have his license taken but I’m gladder still that he never hurt anyone. I don’t know if I could parent two of them, raising mom is my toughest challenge.

I’m going to post a lot about my mom, no avoiding it. I think I should introduce my Dad. Dad was a lot of things, some bad which I won’t discuss. He was a proud man who lost everything they had because he believed the shysty McShysters (yes, plural)  who kept sending him vague promises of riches soon to come… all for a price of course. So Dad would imagine those riches and write a check. The only ones getting rich were the aforementioned shysty McShyster s.  I cannot blame Dad for dreaming, I have dreams of my own. Mine are “what ifs” his turned into financial nightmares. His became mine when he died and I sat in their place alone,  surrounded by ghosts and memories and a forrest worth of papers, bills and letter piles all promising riches for the price of an entry fee. My dad was so smart but yet so very dumb.

And he was a smart man who made a career of engineering. Not choo choo chugga chugga engineering, although he did work at a railroad company. He probably would have loved being a train conductor. I can’t count the times he pulled off the road to watch a train pass by. It was a love his sister and brother shared. When at my Uncle’s house for Thanksgiving dinner only two things would stop a meal; a patient in need of care knocking on my doctor uncle’s home office door or the faint sound of a train approaching. Both Dad and my Uncle would place their napkins on their chairs and rush as one out the door to see the train and count it’s cars. Annoying at the time but a heartwarming memory now.

My dad was the family fixer, builder, and disciplinarian. I will leave his sins for another entry, some memories do no good when remembered. He and my mother were married 63 years. He was her pillar. The role I had thrust upon  me was one he signed up for.  And for all his faults he never ran when it got tough to tend to her. He signed up for the long haul and got one. I do not admire all about him but I admire that. He was a good neighbor, a good father to my brother, a hard worker and above all else, he was a husband to the mother he left to me to take care of. If I can give her even half the care he did, she will be well taken care of..