My Goodness, Monday!

"How did it get so late so soon? 

It's night before it's afternoon. December is here before it's June. 

My goodness how the time has flewn. 

How did it get so late so soon?"  

Dr. Suess (italics mine)

When our father was living with us (as in, on the earth where many--not enough--of us still live, so far,) but was not supposed to still be alive according to several doctors, including one who was afraid to touch him because he thought he might hasten the inevitable, it was quite obvious the poor fellow did not like having his wings clipped.  

He wanted to be out and doing, which was not such an easy thing for him or for us, either, due mostly to the fact that afterwards we wondered how he actually survived all the rigamarole and then we would feel guilty and worried.  We didn't feel much better when we didn't take him places he wanted to go. It felt a little mean.  We took him camping, sight-seeing, grocery shopping, dining out and even got him on a plane to go home to Texas to be with family one last time.  

The plane taxied the runway for more than an hour and he thought we were on a train that was never going to get where we were going.  Sight-seeing was something we called driving around in the car with his asking if I had my lights on and when I said I did, he would exclaim how hazy it was out side.  In the summer.  At high noon.  Dining out found him regaling the waitstaff at Prairie Schooner with tales of the whole pack of us having just pulled up and climbed out of the buckboard wagon to come in and get something to hold us over on the long journey home. (Don't laugh. Two miles is a long journey in a wagon with questionable suspension gear.)  Picture, if you can, my face when he announced, as a very proud father of the bride-to-be, to the unsuspecting cashier at Albertson's that I, his daughter, was getting married tomorrow.  My face reddened at the shock and then more deeply so at the cashier's speechlessness.  

One day I lamented to my younger brother that I wished I could take Dad fishing.  He was never more about his business than when he was fishing.  I knew that one wasn't for me.  At all.  No one else wanted to tackle it, either.  (Oh!  See what I inadvertently just did?)  

"Penny," said Little Bro, "we all have something we wish we could still do." 

"You're right, Bub. We all have things we wish we could do."

Without de-valuing my current state of affairs, and that which I can do, I wish I could still:

• climb pear trees, build a tree porch, eat green pears 
• key on my skates
• have secret communication with life on the moon
• do the limbo
• run and skip and leap over garbage cans...and ENJOY it!
• take a summer nap on the gravelled roof of my house
• walk early to college classes in time to swim a few laps at the free-to-me pool
• be a young college student back in the 70s, while we're at it
• ride my first -- and only--motorcycle up the canyon to a swanky dinner party
• carry a torch for a stuttering preacher
• be in Alaska
• sing
• eat all the bread I ever wanted to lovingly handcraft
• live in Korea, eat strange and exotic street food, sleep on the floor (oh, I can still sleep on the floor, but I'm not so good at getting back up!) 
• be the boss of my sisters (well, I guess I don't wish I could still do this, but it was fun while it lasted...right, girls?)

Oh my goodness gracious sakes alive, where has the time flewn?!