The unwanted text

“Dad is in the hospital.”

When your parents are 88 years old, this is not welcome news. Unfortunately, the older they get, the less surprising it is.

My parents have always had excellent health, and that really hasn’t changed. But 88 is still 88, and things happen. This episode doesn’t seem to be life-threatening though, so it’s just a matter of supporting them through it.

The lion’s share of support comes from my oldest and youngest brothers and their wives, who all live within ten minutes of my parents. I am very thankful for their proximity.

This all got me thinking about a folder of photos I have of my dad. I’ve been slowly working my way through thousands of old slides, converting them to digital images and saving them on thumb drives for my brothers and me. I’ve come across images of my parents as newlyweds, family members from generations back who I didn’t even know, and I’ve shared here some of the pictures from my childhood summers camping out west. Here are a few of my daddy.

This is him as a new father holding my oldest brother. Mom is next to him, then her sister and the church pastor. On the far left is their high school buddy Rusty Schweickart, a former Apollo astronaut.

Daddy was a physicist. He earned his bachelor’s degree by putting himself through Purdue University, and went to work for Nasa as an actual rocket scientist. He is seriously one of the smartest people I know.

But that doesn’t keep him from cooking dinner on one of our many camping trips. As long as I can remember my parents had a small camper. They started out with one that had nothing on the inside but four bunks. The “kitchen” was on the outside, under a section of the trailer that lifted up. The potty was out in the woods. This camper is like the Taj Mahal.

My parents were both teachers, meaning they had their summers off. One summer when I was almost eleven and my little brother was just a year old, Daddy was taking classes toward his master’s degree. He had to commute up to North Jersey in the heat and traffic and I’m sure it was miserable. After the first day, he came home and told my mother he quit. They packed up the trailer and station wagon and off we went to explore the West and that was without a doubt the very best parenting decision my father ever made. I can’t even begin to describe all my brothers and I saw and did and experienced on those summer trips, but they were life-changing. We talk about them every single time we get together.

Here he is going fishing with my youngest brother somewhere out west. Daddy is an avid fisherman who loves all kinds of fishing: he used live bait and lures, fly fished, and deep sea fished. He actually owned a party boat for a few years that he ran in the summers to put me through college.

My father is a great dancer. Here he is teaching me to swing dance at a dad-daughter dance in college.

1982, the whole family.

He is an amazing grandfather. Here he is feeding my first son (who is now 38) cookies—all he wants.

Over the years he has given so much to his grandchildren. He’s built rocking horses, doll cradles, book shelves, and many sets of bunk beds. He has helped with college tuition and tutored them in math and physics. He took one to Washington DC to tour the National Gallery of Art. And when one unexpectedly lost her job right after buying a house, he helped her survive until she got back on her feet.

Now he’s pouring into his great-grandchildren with more rocking horses and many, many stories.

We are blessed to have him.