boyhood sketch 18.SECOND CONE

R. to L. Murray, Dad & Me

My father loved ice cream, not inordinately, merely a great deal. When I was a child, an ice cream cone was a rare treat. My father never had a lot of discretionary cash in pocket. Times were difficult for a factory laborer. Dad share his ice cream pleasure with whomever was with him. One night Dad and I had walked uptown to St. Paul Street for an ice cream cone, ten cents, two scoops. Two blocks away from the store I was still savouring the remaining scoop when my dad, his cone already gone, stopped, looked at me and said, "that tastes like more. What do you think?" I responded as enthusiastically as I could to cover my surprise. We turned and I hurriedly finished my cone. We arrived at the ice cream store to a smiling ice cream shop owner. Dad said, "We will each have another cone." As the years went by ice cream was increasingly present. My mother worked at Avondale Dairy, which to everyone in the Niagara area was a go to place for cones and sundaes and shakes. As grandchildren came along, he loved to treat them. Following his death at age 93, my brother Murray suggested that his three sons and their families in Ontario and British Columbia, honour Dad’s birthday and memory each March 8th, with an Ice Cream Cone Day. In B.C. the practice is dessert before main course, and with several tubs of flavours, as many cones as you like is the rule. Grandchildren who never met Dad, love him.

I AM 70 & I MISS MY FATHER

My father died five years ago. I wasn’t thinking about Dad as I drove to the Library to work on several communications I will deliver soon. I saw a man walking. His posture, his gait, his hat and glasses instantly activated a memory of my dad. As soon as the idea occurred that it was him, I corrected myself with the comprehension that I had lost him.

I was overcome by a sense of my loss. I miss my dad so much. My brothers Murray and Neale know this loss too, but so do our wives, because he was a gentle man and sweet towards his own sweetheart and to ours as well.

A fresh rush of gratitude fills me now as I recall that this humble soft-spoken factory line worker charmed grandchildren, nieces and nephews and friends. He was a man with whom it was natural to feel safe. He was good company, expected little, asked for nothing, had a generous spirit. If he was lonely when Mom left six months sooner, he kept this private. And then, the man who was always there when I would go home, who never seemed to change, was gone.

“Today, I felt your absence once again, Dad.”