The View From a Different Window: for my father

     Good morning dear family and friends from here a long ways away from where most of you are this day. It's the early morning hours, just about 4:30 and I've just finished up cup of coffee #1. You know I used to never be able to make it through a half of a cup before I'd had a plenty. Nowadays there's usually 3 cups' worth in me before I make it out the door for school each morning. Good thing I only have to drive 9 miles or so to get to school, because one of the first things I do is to "hit up" the bathroom LOL. I know, I know....that's a "TMI" kind of moment but I'm getting older, you know?

     Today would have been my dad's birthday, his 91st to be exact. Gone now from us since 1982 at Christmas time, it just doesn't seem possible that all the years have sped by. I was a young woman when he died, a mother to a little 2-year old boy named Ricky. Now as my 59th birthday approaches at the end of this year, I am exactly the same age my father was when he died. Sometimes I think about that and ponder what all he missed out on seeing in his very short life on earth. As over 3 decades have passed by, my perspective on his life and on my own are very much different now. I miss him and I'll be the first to admit that it is not the kind of yearning for him that I cry each morning for his presence around me again. That's not the way he would have wished for it to be for me, I'm sure. I miss my father in those certain times when a girl, even a 58-year old one, just needs her dad to be around. I still feel his spirit with me and boy have I ever called out his name, certainly in times of trouble. Just last week as I was travelling in blizzard-like conditions from La Junta to Lamar, I remember crying out, "Daddy, I could use a hand here. Where's the road?" I know some might find that crazy but to me it made perfect sense. Just as an aside here, I think my dad sent me a private message that sounded something like this.... "What are you doing driving in a blizzard in the first place? Get your head where it belongs and you will make it!"

     I always knew that I had good parents and although I'm sure I didn't agree with them on things some times, in retrospect they were doing the best they could in order to provide a secure and safe environment for me to grow up in. My father was gone away from home from mid-May until late in the fall each year as he followed the harvest run with his crew of combines. I never thought about it all that much at the time and it just seemed "normal" for him to be on the road travelling straight north and then back to the south in the geographical stretch we call the "Great Plains". But now that I sit back and realize so, that was a lot of time not to have a father around. Yet life didn't fall apart, we didn't get into trouble at school, and we learned a lot about a strong work ethic because of the fact that he did what he did. I admire him for that and as I look back now, my father (and mom too!) "role-modeled" for me the person that I was destined to become as well. I thank him for that and with regret I wish I would have paid even more attention to him in my growing up years. I guess we all can say that from time to time.

     So to my daddy this morning I would say how much I still love him. He gave me my entire name, "Peggy Ann Scott". I am who I am this day in great part because of him and I know of the many sacrifices that he made on my behalf. If you are blessed to still have a father my friends, please give him a call today and even if it's no more than to say "hello", just do it. Don't pass up an opportunity that may not be here by the morrow. You won't regret it if you do....you might regret it if you don't.

See you in Heaven Daddy! I haven't changed a bit~you will recognize me right away :)

The day I graduated from college in 1979 and he was there to see me walk across the stage to get my diploma. I think we both might have been crying :)