Late Father's Day Post

I joined my youngest son and his family for Father's Day burgers at his home. His father is 300 miles away in another city. It was a coolish but pleasant evening. We ate inside as we have unusually cool temperatures for this time of year in E.  Washington and the wind is blowing steadily, strong enough to bring down branches and a some power lines. This is the child who in high school said he never have any children. Hahaha. He has three homegrown ones and six more that he and his sweet wife adopted. At this time they have two more 16-year old foster kids as well. Five of the first bunch are long out of the house. And they are grandparents of an 18-month boy. Happy Father's Day son.

Below is a photo of my younger sister and my Dad about 1949 in Honolulu where we lived for two years. That's part of Diamond Head behind them. He must have been about 33 then. That's where I acquired my taste for Akira Kurosawa films. He used to take us girls to see them. After we moved to Seattle he still took us to see those films downtown. He had a favorite Japanese restaurant he took us to and because he spoke Japanese the staff always looked after us well and stayed around to chat. 

He was a fisheries researcher and those two years we spent there were two of his favorite years. It's one of my favorite pictures of him.

He was a complicated person, maybe we all are but he was bright and well educated scientist. He never understood how he could have produced four daughters who in spite of good grades avoided math and took only the required Algebra and Geometry. I did okay with geometry but he coached me through Algebra 2 or 3 nights a week the whole year I had to take it. Shaking his head every time. I eventually got a B out of it never knowing why. Many years later I worked for a software education company and was given the assignment to do a video for teaching, you might have guessed, Algebra! Sigh, I was quite surprised to find that my Dad's coaching of my 13-year self had actually stuck. 

It was from him I got my love of the outdoors. When we were fairly young he took us with him on fishing boats, visiting hatcheries everywhere we went, We lived for awhile at the now long defunct fish hatchery that was in Deception Pass State Park in the mid-1940's. We hiked with him through the woods in many places while he did fish counts and inspections early in his career. Down stream from him my sister and I would swim and play. To this day the smell of fish food in a hatchery overwhelms me with nostalgia. It certainly is not to most folks taste but it smells like home and my Dad to me. Just writing that made me cry a little, good times.

Happy Father's Day Daddy.