I read this one a couple of times and you know,I'll bet there are as many takes on fathers as there are people on the planet,and none of them exactly the same.

Right, Marda. It really is hard to imagine my own father as any younger than middle-aged. That's how I like to remember him, not as the cancer-ravaged man he was as an older man. I like to think of him before his hair went all gray and was still salt-and-pepper, and when he still had an athletic walk and was oh-so handsome. Thank you for making me think of that.

Now I'm getting all teary...........

My father died of complications from a neck tumor while I was in grade school. My memories of him are as he was, in the garden, helping a neighbor, driving the family to the grocery store, laughing at a joke, hugging my mother. The hopeful and then hopeless years spent caring for him have shrunk to one memory of him near the end, when he couldn't eat more than a bite of a requested custard. I suspect that I, like most children, eliminated the inconsequential memories so as to have room for those that matter.

My dad was always very cerebral and usually distant,but had a heart of gold. Underneath he was a total mush pot and the love letters he wrote my mother from the age of 13 until the last one he wrote her when she was in a nursing home and totally uncomunicative ,would warm your heart. I remember him explaining some of the laws of physics to me when I was in elementary school,I remember him looking with a critical eye on the world and yet falling asleep on the floor with Cody his,and my dog,and I remember him in his early 30s,crawling around on the floor with a rug over his head scaring the heck out of my brother and I one Halloween. He was a dichotomy just as we all are.

I remember my dad being spontaneous and a lot of fun right up until near the end of his life when his body finally failed him. Not formally educated past high school, he had great intellectual curiosity & read copiously & was a big PBS documentary fan. He loved sports and played on a softball team until he was almost 50 & on a bowling team until he was 81. I never remember him speaking a word in anger & he was one of those people of whom it could be said that he never met a stranger. He was born on Christmas Eve 1910 & I like to think that he was a gift to everyone he knew.