Some reasons to be thankful...

Although, I'm sure this is harder for my Mom and my Brother because they had been with him every holiday season, today marks the beginning of the first holiday season without my Dad alive. So in honor of Thanksgiving and in honor of my Dad, I'm going to give you a few of reasons why I'm eternally thankful for him...

1. He taught me about Jesus.

2. He gave me my sense of humor.

3. He instilled in me the ability recognize the worth of each and every human being, and gave me the heart to help them see it in themselves.

4. He told me to move to Tennessee, the best advice I ever received!

5. He taught me to never turn my back on a friend in need even if it's inconvenient.

6. Farting loudly in public could ALWAYS be blamed on toads or frogs.

7. He was never embarrassed about who he was or what he believed in.

8. He dreamed like a child, always believing in possibilities.

9. He loved me without end and always made sure I knew it.

10. He gave me music...without him I probably never would have sang a note.

I love you Dadio...I miss you so much and I wish you were around so I could call and say "Happy Turkey Day!"....

The Turd Bird...

My Dad had a saying for the rare (okay, not so rare) moments where my Brother and I would throw fits. He'd see us pouting, with our lips stuck out like Bubba from Forest Gump, and he'd taunt the laughter out of us saying, "Awwwwwh, is there a wittle birdy that's gonna come and poop on your lip? Is there? Is there a wittle birdy's gonna come and poop on your lip? Awwwwh!" over and over again until we could no longer hold a straight face. It worked without fail.

I realized just how real that hypothetical bird was to my dad the first year my Dad took me to "Take Your Daughter to Work Day" at Tektronix. His cubicle was nothing special, just four dividing half-walls with a small opening that served as a doorway. Take Your Daughter to Work Day was all well and good in thought, but it was in all actuality insanely boring to be with your Dad while he worked and you sat there and twiddled your thumbs all day. Attempting to soothe my boredom I looked around for anything to play with, and there sitting on shelf was "The Turd Bird". Yes, it was a literal piece of shit, horse shit to be exact. It had two pipe cleaner legs, tiny feather wings, a toothpick beak, and plastic eyes you'd get from a craft store. It was mounted on a tiny wooden pedestal and labeled, "The Turd Bird", and underneath was the scientific name (which I no longer remember, but I assume it went a little something like poopicus maximus or shiteous globulous).

Because I inherited the same humorous fascination with things other people would be disgusted by, I WANTED THAT TURD BIRD. I still want it. I don't know where it went to or how I didn't end up with it in my room on the night stand next to my bed....but if I ever run across one, it's going to be mine. (The picture above is not the actual turd bird...my Dad's was cooler...as in...the horse poo was horizontal and not vertical...it makes a massive difference.)

Making it Work...

For the longest time I resented my Dad. Even though at the time I thought I was old enough to understand, I just couldn't help but feel abandoned and unimportant. After we moved from Portland, Oregon to Crooked River Ranch, Oregon in 1996 my Dad had a hard time finding adequate work in central Oregon and was forced to commute back and forth from our new home to Beaverton, Oregon every week. He would leave Sunday night, trek the 4 hours to the valley, and then come back home late Friday nights.

As you can imagine, my Dad missed a lot of things. He missed me singing, he missed all but one of my 7th grade basketball games (although, he wasn't missing much, I didn't score once all season and let that be my only season ever), he missed me cheerleading at high school football and basketball games, my choir concerts, sports awards, solo festivals, etc. In my mind, I had sincerely thought he just didn't want to be there. That he didn't care enough to figure out anyway he could to show up for me.

As an adult I see that I had it all wrong. It was BECAUSE of me, my little brother, and my Mom, that my Dad worked so hard. I'm sure if given the option he'd of had a job in our new hometown and he'd of never missed a thing, but he didn't have that option. It wasn't his decision, the only decision he had was to provide for his family and keep us fed, clothed, and sheltered. It was an amazing and, frankly, life-altering realization that my Dad loved us THAT MUCH that he would drive 8-hours (or more) a week just to give us the things we needed and to see us on the weekends. I see now that my childish ignorance probably didn't give him the credit he deserved for many of the things I took for granted, and I regret that.

There's no doubt in my mind that my Dad did everything he knew to do to make it work, and I'm so proud of him for that.

The Perm-mullet...

As I've mentioned before, my Dad was a service member in the National Guard and played in the National Guard Band on the drum line....I'm not quite sure how long he served, I'm guessing it was quite sometime since he enlisted when he was 17 and got out when I was almost through elementary school (I'm thinking the number was around 13 years). Anyways...by the time he got out he was READY to get out (and this was against my grandfather's good advice to stay in his 20 years and get his retirement and health insurance benefits, mind you)...and this showed. Over the months following his discharge, his hair started to grow...and grow...and grow...and one day he came home with a really tight-curled perm. Not just a perm...a permed MULLET. Now, this would have been REALLY cool in the 80's (this was mid-to-late 90's now)...but my Dad's inner rockstar just wouldn't let it die with the decade, especially since he never got to sport the look having been enlisted all of the 80's. I remember being absolutely horrified that my Dad had a perm AND a mullet, I guess that even at that age I knew it was just a tad bit outdated.

Oh well, I'm glad that my Dad got to recapture his rebellious youth, even if just for a little while! You go Dad! ;-)

Peanut Sauce...

One of the things my Dad and I had in common was our love for food. So it made sense that around the age of 14, he would introduce me to Thai food and it would quickly become my favorite indulgence.

One Thai food experience in particular transcends all others...I was 15, I know this because I had just gotten my learning permit and I drove our entire family PLUS my friend Vanessa all the way to Sisters from Crooked River Ranch. If you've ever driven those winding roads, you know we're lucky to be alive. That and because at 15, I was definitely the world's worst driver. My Dad had spent the day on the golf course, which meant that he had spent the day drinking, which meant I could talk him into letting me drive, which meant he could talk my Mom into letting me drive, which he did. So after a white-knuckled 45-minutes of my crazy driving we made it safely to the Thai restaurant.

Vanessa, or "Lil' V" as we called her, had never eaten Thai food, and my Dad was more than happy to show her the ropes. He ordered a ton of food (and probably a few more drinks), but the first thing to come out were the chicken and beef skewers. Those of you who love Thai food know that those skewers come with a delicious peanut sauce, and when you're feeding 5 people that sauce tends to run out. The combination of our sauce running out and my Dad having "golfed" all day aligned to create the perfect comedic moment...

Having gotten the waiters attention, my Dad managed to slur out, "Exsscuse me...can we gettssomore peanusssauce?"

The whole table burst out laughing. We laughed until we cried, until our bellies ached, until we couldn't laugh anymore. And for the next 10-years all you'd have to do is mention, "Peanut Sauce" and we'd all be transported back to that table, laughing over slurring words.

One-Bean Coffee...

"Oh the one-bean coffee! We have to have the one-bean coffee! Can you PLEEEEEAAAASSEEE make me your famous one-bean coffee?"-Dad

Yes, I was quite the gullible child. Somewhere along the line my parents taught me how to make coffee. I would grind the beans, put the grounds in the filter, put the filter in the machine, pour the water in the top, and push START. As every coffee drinker knows, this isn't an out-of-the-ordinary coffee making process, with one exception...the magic touch for Donielle's Famous One-Bean Coffee was the one whole coffee bean I'd add before I closed the filter in the coffee maker. I was convinced that ONE bean made a world of difference in the taste (even though I had never tried coffee one-beaned or otherwise), and my Dad was more than happy to agree with me and milk it for all it was worth. He would throw me his puppy dog eyes and ask if I could make him some of my famous one-bean coffee...and I would. The genius of it all is that we both got what we wanted...he got his pot of coffee without having to lift a finger, and in the process he made me feel like I was the most amazing coffee barista that ever ground a coffee bean.

The Parading Drummer...

As a child, nothing made me more proud than the day I saw my Dad in a parade. The City of Roses, also known as Portland, Oregon, and my hometown, held it's Rose Festival every year and with that came a huge parade. There were Rose Princesses and one Rose Queen, high school and college marching bands, floats, different community organizations, the Firemen and Police, the list could go on and on, but it was quite an experience for a little girl.

With Carl's Jr. in hand, we sat down on the curb and watched as the parade went by. It seemed as if we waited for hours before we saw him (which we probably did), but there, in a green National Guard uniform with a drum strapped around his neck, was my Dad. I remember his face was stern and his eyes were fixed on the head in front of him as he marched. His drumsticks moved up and down, beating on the drum in complete synchronicity with the rest of his drum line. He was completely in character. "That's my dad, that's MY DAD, THAT'S MY DAD!!" played louder in my head than the music they were performing. I can't remember a moment before it or after it that made me more proud than that night did. After all, did YOUR Dad get to march in a parade? ;-)

A Start...

It's been 7-months and 7-days since my Dad turned 49, and it's also been 7-months and 15-days since the day I received the call that he had died. I remember waking up to anxiety that day like something in my world had gone wrong and I was just waiting for the moment the universe would reveal it to me. The two words that would change my world forever came at 9:43 AM Central Standard Time from a phone call 5 hours earlier in Hawaii. As you can imagine, my heart pounded out of it's chest before I even answered the phone; 4:43 AM, something had happened to either my Brother or my Dad. In the few moments it took the phone to ring, for me to look at my Mom's picture on the screen, and answer to hear "Dad's gone", I had already turned into a shell of what I was only moments before. I remember thinking, "This is what it's like...this is what it's like for your Dad to be dead. This is what you've thought about countless times before and wondered what your response would be, how you could possibly handle it, how you wouldn't survive it"... I had always thought my Dad would die young...he was a heavy smoker, he drank more in one night than most of us do in a month...but truthfully, I had thought "young" meant early-to-mid-60's. So you can imagine much my surprise, that at 49, a week after he had received the last birthday card of his life, he was dead.

It was a convenient thing he went so soon after his birthday. There wasn't a person close to him who didn't talk to him within that last week of his life. Our last chat was the night before; he had written me on Facebook chat while we were playing Zynga Poker, something we did frequently. He had said, "I miss you. I miss you. I love you. I love you. I miss you and love you. Can I call you?" Something I found extraordinarily odd as he would never ask my permission to call me, nor would he repeat phrases of adoration over and over again. I said "Of course you can call me!" Sometimes I imagine what it would have been like had I not of heard his voice that last time, had I of been too tired and said "I'm going to bed", or simply didn't feel like talking. I thank God that I had that last 20-minutes with him; laughing our asses off at the Bohemian Rhapsody Shreds my boyfriend discovered on YouTube as the last few grains of grains of sand slowly fell to the bottom of his hourglass.

I think he must have known his time on earth was coming to an end. About a month before he died he called me and told me he was proud of me, a sentiment he rarely (if ever) shared before that point, although many times I had tried to make him feel that way. I think most of my adolescence was spent trying to prove something to him or get his attention (note: my music scholarships, my GPA, my singing any and every where I could...just to name a few), it's funny that the one thing that would spark his interest enough to mention was my talent in the kitchen, something that up until a few years ago I could have cared less about. He said, "I just gave you ONE recipe someone had given to me and you took it and ran with it. You made it your own and now you cook so many amazing things. I'm so proud of you. I'm serious! I really, really am!" I wonder if he knew then that those words would change everything about our relationship forever, that those words would melt away years of anger and resentment I harbored desperately attempting to suck those words out of him. Because of those words, I can now say for certain that he wasn't perfect, but he was the perfect Dad for me.

Recently, it has become obvious that as the days and months between his death and today become greater, I am going to need to record the things I remember about him. The little memories and the big ones, a phrase he said or some facial expression that I remembered by seeing myself accidentally repeating it in the mirror, whatever it may be, these are all things I need and want to remember. I am attempting to blog every time something comes to mind and I hope that my family and friends will help me remember as well. Here's to Keeping the Memory Alive: A Tribute to My Dad.