Sacred Sundays – Daddy’s Girl…

….has never been a label that fit me!   

I hated daddy daughter parties and when we were asked to dance with our parents at the end of the year dance recitals at school, I was mortified.

He loved the mountains, riding horses and raising sheep.  Everything I did not appreciate as a child.  I never followed him to auctions.   I was afraid of animals and got bucked off  (in his opinion, I fell off) of every horse I rode. 

They called him Rip.  Some believed it was because he could rip you apart.  This was a card he played well when I started dating.  He never really said much to my dates.  The only guy I dated whom he liked, smelled like cows (a hazard of working at a dairy).  And his way of telling my boyfriend it was late and time to go home was walking through the living room in his tightie-whities.   
He seemed larger than life and far different from me…but there are some memories of him that I hold very dear.   

Snuggling with him in his orange rocking chair.  Rubbing his crew cut, because it felt so cool.   Him pulling the peach fuzz on my arms…because it made him laugh?!?!  His snort every time he laughed.

His pile of never worn Levi’s (501) because the current pair was perfectly fine.  He was so hard to buy for…I usually resorted to a screw driver or a bottle of Skin Bracer.   He got along just fine without us spending all our money or his.  Any one of the old run down cars in his fields was better than any new car you could buy.  And so we usually did not have a car … just his cattle truck. The one that rattled loudly as he drove through the church parking lot to see if we were at church.  And the one that usually smelled like ether because all the junk on the passenger side of the floor shifted and set off a can of starting fluid.  

He loved his grand babies.  No one was better than he was at getting them to smile and laugh.   It was watching him with them that made me realize how much he loved me too.   

I miss him…I wish I would have known better how to be a Daddy’s Girl … but I know he is aware of me and is watching over my  life with boys and life on the farm He is laughing…how my whole world smells like cows and my car floors are piled high with junk…on a daily basis he is giving a snort and a laugh…all the approval this newly established Daddy’s girl needs.