This morning for Father’s Day my daughter Mara and my wife Angela presented me with several gifts, just for being Mara’s dad (could this gig possibly get any better?).
A Father's Day gift that gives anticipation all summer!
Among them was a hand-printed “announcement” that they will be coming to fetch me early from work on August 6th so we can attend a concert of the band Crooked Still, of whom I am something of a fan. The concert will be outside on the grounds of the old school at St. Edwards State Park, and I can hardly wait.
When she's off studying music in Vienna or teaching soil management at some hippie college in Oregon I know I'm going to see this among the hellebores and cry all over it.
Mara has been asking all week long when Fathers’ Day is because she was so excited to give me her gift. It’s a stepping stone for the garden, shown above in its plastic container while curing. Mara placed every “gemstone” in it herself, reports Angela, and made the handprint. I’m agog with delight over it. We placed it in the garden this evening.
Here’s a picture of the real gift I get to open my eyes to every day.
Angela and Mara, June 2009
I took this image with my vintage (1940s) Speed Graphic 4×5. I’ve taken only about two dozen shots with it in the five years I’ve had it, and I still haven’t learned how to focus it very well , but given that you have to set up your shot under a dark cloth and shoot blind, I’m pretty happy with this. Of course, the subjects do lend themselves…
What a beautiful gift! Happy belated Father’s Day. Cheers.
Thanks Louis! Do they celebrate Father’s Day in Brazil?
What a wonderful Father’s day you must have had! I just found some clay “animals” in the basement last week as I was doing the giant Goodwill round-up; I say “animals” because basically they are lumps of clay I squeezed my hand around and then the teacher put them in the kiln and I called them dogs or something. I’m very sorry to report that the sentimentality was far outweighed by the hilarity (my friend Jennifer who was helping me managed to yelp out between hysterical coughs of laughter that she has a fond memory of them in our kitchen on the sill); thank goodness your daughter won’t have that problem with her true work of art!
I made a clay figure for my mom once, which she kept forever against all the imperatives of good taste. If memory serves, it started out trying to be a sailor or captain, but it ended up looking like a beat cop. It was hideous. Its huge mouth gaped, and the whole thing was painted black and shellacked. It (dis)graced various shelves and windowsills in our home throughout my life and whenever I came across it it would startle me and my lip would curl a little bit. The thing owed its long display career to the inexplicable breadth of Mother Love. I can’t imagine it still exists, but if it does I’ll snap a photo.
yup- mine went to the big landfill in the sky today (sorry Mom, but you’re not around to love them anymore). After all, I’m not the cherishing parent- just the extremely embarassed and amused artist.