I had my children at my husband's lot today, running around in the warm WINTER sun. It was comforting to watch my kids interacting with my husband and to see how they truly love him so much. He's their dad, and they feel just like I do about mine. I wondered what they would remember years from now when they looked back on their childhood. Would they remember this run-down lot that my husband is working so hard to fix up and provide a living for his family? Will they remember the back room of the office trailor that he set up as a playroom for the kids? Will they remember the pot-holes and the giant pile of sand a dumtruck unloaded there when he broke down? These may seem like insignificant hoosier memories to some, but I remember my parents going through the same thing. They were just trying to make ends meet and do what they could to give us the best possible life.
I remember my own father wearing his cut-off jeans and his shaggy-red hair. Some of my best times were him teaching us how to ride our bikes on the dead-end road, or roasting marshmellows down by the creek bed. I remember spending lots of time in the woods with my father, in the shop with my father, running errands with my father, him teaching me constantly. I thought the world of him and still do. All the things that seemed like everyday life to me, I have come to learn were truly special. Not everyone had a father that played with them for hours in the snow, or built them a swingset, or taught them how to shoot soda cans off a saw-horse, but mine did. There are more memories than my fingers could ever write, and I know that we didnt have much but it always seemed like we were rich to me.
And now I watch my own kids and wonder if they'll remember how poor we are, or will they remember how much fun they had instead. My father works hard to make a comfortable life that we all enjoy and my husband does the same. I am so sure that Albert (husband) will be a great success and so my children might not remember this time. If they do, I hope they have the understanding that I do. Those memories of our early years are perhaps the most influential memories we have. They wont remember a run-down lot, but they will remember their dad running his son on his shoulders through the parking lot, and watching the train go by across the highway (afterall, we live on the Island of Sodor, as their dad likes to tell them). They'll remember their dad putting them on top of cars and racing them along the fence line.
I was lucky to have my father and now I am lucky to have married a man that invests in his children like mine did with me.
Thank you, Dad, for all you are to your children, and thank you, Albert, for all that you will be to yours.
