Keidra's post about her grandmother on her other blog, No Attention, got me mulling over my dad -- well, that and listening to U2's "Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own" (What? I can't help it if I reference U2 a lot in my life!).
My dad died when I was 20. He had a lot of illness -- various cancers and a stroke finally did him in. We had a stormy relationship (which I'm perfectly honest about). He was traditional Chinese -- if you disobeyed him, you got your ass kicked. I became a teenage girl -- we can see where this went.
Despite this, we both loved each other very much. I was his little girl and he was my dad. And I've been lucky to carry a lot of good memories about him, which is mixed in with the shitty stuff.
The other day, Jeff was mowing the lawn and I had the house windows open. The smell of freshly-cut grass took me back to the days when my dad would be outside, mowing the lawn, shirt off and his wiry body pushing that ancient Toro up and down the backyard in neat rows.
Every few minutes the lawnmower would stop and he'd take the huge bags of grass and dump them onto the garden as mulch. He was cheap like that. He would never buy mulch, but he'd use the lawn clippings. Now that I think about it, environmentalists would love that idea.
At the end of the mowing, he'd flip the lawnmower on its side and hose down the blades to keep them clean and sharp. I would come out with a glass of ice water for him, which he would gulp down.
"Can you scratch my back?" he'd often ask.
I happily obliged and sat outside, enjoying the summer weather, as he'd mumble instructions like "Higher," "Lower," "left" or "right there." After the sun set, we'd go inside and watch wrestling together.
"It's all fake," he'd say.
Funny how scents can revive memories.
3 comments:
Very nice.
ditto. and making me weepy. hope you're okay!
AWWW! I hope that it didn't make you that weepy! I had fun writing it. It was a little teary, but nothing too bad. I just remembered the good stuff and enjoyed the moment.
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