When I was a little girl, I would have done anything to have my dad take me fishing. Of course, there wasn’t time for fishing. We farmed and there was always work to be done and never enough time to do it. Somehow, time slipped away and I never had a chance to spend a sunny afternoon fishing with my dad.
Then, a couple of years ago, I drove down a gravel road on the way to a pond north of my parents’ farm. My kids and I waved as we met a big green tractor mowing ditches. Sure enough, it was my dad. He smiled and waved.
Several minutes later, his dusty truck pulled up next to the pond. My dad stepped out in his overalls and said, “Are we catching anything?” I did a double take as it was 4:00 in the afternoon and certainly he couldn’t be done for the day.
For the next two hours, I stood next to him. I watched him bait hooks and joke with my kids. He smelled like cigarettes and tractor grease which, oddly enough, are both smells that I love simply because they remind me of him. His hands were dirty and rough showing signs that he didn’t take an afternoon off very often. Never once, did he look at his watch. He towered over my little girls like a gentle giant as they waited for him to cast their line into the water again and again.
And somehow, through the course of the afternoon, the part of my heart that ached for her dad to spend an afternoon with her…healed. We didn’t catch a thing, but for me, the day was perfectly perfect.
I love you, Dad.
