perfect weather

After all the recent storms, it's nice to have such a beautiful day. The skies are blue, the humidity is low, the temperatures are moderate. Storms are expected again late tonight and tomorrow, but let's hope they don't do the damage that has been done by the past ones. The counties along the lakeshore have suffered many road washouts and lots of flooding, but since they got 11 inches of rain in one night, no surprise.

Tomorrow is Father's Day. I've chosen to handmake a card for my husband. I've selected a drawing of Atlas holding up the earth and put it inside a blank card. Inside it, I say "You hold up my world." Because he does. He is the center. Everything has revolved around him for 38 years, and though I sometimes write negatively about some aspects of his behavior, it would be hard to find another person as kind-hearted, gentle, generous, and intelligent.

Next week he gives his final exam and then he, too, gets some time off for summer vacation. It will be nice to sleep late with him (on the days he's not up before dawn to play golf) and stay up late with him, assuming Simon the alarm cat doesn't do what he did yesterday. It was 8:30 a.m., and he decided that it was time we were up and at 'em. We retaliated by not petting him. Since the ritual is to get up, pet Simon, make coffee, pet Simon, drink coffee, pet Simon, etc., he had to pay for his little wake-up call by being ignored. Today he was a good boy, though.

The doves are calling. I think they are so beautiful and don't even mind their pooping on the deck and front porch. Why in the world would anyone ever want to shoot them?

Yet another reason I love my husband. He doesn't kill things (except bugs, when I ask him to). Even then, he'll usually usher the bug outside rather than kill it.

I'm a lucky woman. If I'd stayed in Louisiana in LaSalle Parish, I'd have married some goat-ropin' truck-drivin' good ole boy who'd get drunk on Saturday nights and slap me around. Not really. It's just the kind of person so many of my relatives and friends are married to.

So, to all the fathers out there, have a wonderful day. To my own father, wherever he is, I still miss you. I know you aren't alive here on earth, but you will always be alive in my memories and thoughts. You weren't much interested in heaven when you were alive, so if there is a heaven, and you're there, you're probably as surprised as I would be. If there's a hell, and you're there (though you were too good to go there), then I know I'll see you one day. If it's just ashes to ashes and dust to dust, we'll both become part of the earth together, the same way everyone else does. I won't shoot you up into space the way my daughter-in-law shot her father's ashes (well, some of them), and you wouldn't have wanted that anyway. Putting you beneath a pine tree in the middle of Winn Parish, where the only sounds are those that surrounded you in your daily labor as a logcutter--birds, squirrels, wind, rain--that's the only place you would have wanted to be. S.