Here's Looking At You, Dad

(A Father's Day Remembrance)

As I reflect on the father's day just passed, I recall that my childhood was pretty idyllic. My family was on the mission field in rural Alaska in the 1970s and 1980s. I was not homeschooled...I don't think my mother had heard of it at that time and the “lack of socialization,” while not an accurate concern in most places today, would have been valid at that place and time. So I attended public school but what that looked like is very different from what it looks like today. It reminds me now of the one-room schoolhouse ideal from the days of the western American prairie. It was not [quite] two hundred years ago and come to think of it, maybe it was one of the last places in this country where a kid could get that kind of education and experience.

            I have many memories of my school days and maybe you'll hear more in time, but what I remember from BEFORE I went off to school is my dad's voice, reading my favorite stories to me. I don't remember my mother ever reading aloud, just my father. Maybe that was their agreement, dad would do the bedtime reading.

When I think of them or read them to my kids, I feel wrapped in a layer of warmth and affection. These selections might date me a little and reveal that I'm a “list-maker,” but these are the stories that stroll with me down memory lane:

• Blueberries for Sal – Robert McCloskey
• A Fly Went By – Mike McClintock
• Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel – Virginia Lee Burton
• Too Many Bozos – Lilian Moore
• Bread and Jam for Frances – Lilian Hoban
• Annie and the Old One – Miska Miles
• And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street – Dr Seuss
• Andy and the Lion – James Daugherty
• Morris Goes to School – B Wiseman
• The Biggest Bear – Lynd Ward

              I'm not saying that these are the best children's books ever written, run right out and buy them all! Because everyone's favorites are going to be different. But for me, these second-generation books are special, and will forever be linked in my mind and my heart with my late father.

           But my wish for you is that some day, when your kid is [somewhere around] 50, and they think of their favorite books, may the sound they hear be your voice and may they be surrounded with love.