He stands at 6'2" and is still, at 55 years old, the strongest man I know. As a child, my mom could scream, rant, and rave and it never phased me. One stern look from my dad, however, and I would become a sobbing, snotty, slobbering mess in two seconds flat. My dad fishes, hikes, paintballs, burps, screams at the t.v. during sports games and can't seem to understand why one must match their shirt to their shorts. He is, in every sense of the word...a MAN. And yet, despite this facade of incomparable manliness...my dad can be brought to tears by the sight of his boys in the early months of summer...a time of year that he looks forward to with great anticipation each year.
Meet...The "Boys"
Yes, my dad calls the hummingbirds that swarm his house each year the "boys"...HIS boys. He painstakingly cleans out their feeders, and fills them with his special concoction of one pitcher of water to 2 cups sugar EVERY day. Their feeders hang outside his window so that he can watch them come and go every morning. The first meeting between my dad and my husband went a little something like this:
Graham: Hi brother Ford, my name's Graham.
Dad: (after a long, intimidating pause [my dad is awesome at these awkward intervals] which involved an equally long, intimidating stare) Do you know anything about hummingbirds?
Graham: ummmm
While neither my dad, nor Graham remember this first meeting (it was a good seven years ago), I do...quite fondly in fact. And although my dad might look scary, just remember...if you happen to be on the receiving end of one of those long intimidating pauses/stares...the dude likes hummingbirds...how scary can he be?
No comments :
Post a Comment