Angie of Angie Kinghorn Life, With Artistic License is a self proclaimed writer, blogger, twin mom, former lawyer, Junior League dropout, PPD survivor, bookaholic and founder of the Anti-Scrapbooking League. She also squeezes her toothpaste from the middle. Such a rebel and an all around awesome chick! And I’ve got her here today with a letter to her father, who passed away four years ago. With Father’s Day last weekend (and every other day), he has been on her mind.
Dear Dad,
Four Father’s Days after, I want nothing more than to send you a card.
Happy Father’s Day, it would say. It’s summer now, and we’re teaching the twins how to play softball. I still use your old glove, and the neon yellow ball we threw around the front yard so many summer evenings.
I wish you could see them – you’d be so proud. Grant’s got a summer haircut, cropped short, and with his freckles and the blue eyes that have turned to green, he looks so much like you. Especially when he’s up to something. He has your impish grin. He has your thirst for knowledge. Right now it’s all things sharks, trains, and dinosaurs. And he’s so kind, both to people and to animals – just like you.
Anne is beautiful and strong-willed and well, everything you’d expect my daughter to be. I love her and we butt heads, and I feel a little more for what you went through raising two daughters. She has this inner light that draws people to her like moths to flame; charisma like I’ve never seen. One minute she’s a six-year-old cuddle bug, the next, she’s a sulky teen. God, how I’d love to talk to you about raising daughters.
I’d love to talk to you about raising a boy, too. Sometimes I wonder if I’m doing it right. If there’s enough sport mixed in, if there’s enough rough and tumble.
But I have Mark, and I wish you could see just how wonderful a husband and father he is. I’m beyond lucky, Dad, and I thank God every day for bringing him into my life. The children idolize him, and so does the dog. In fact, he’s really more Mark’s dog now, if that tells you anything.
Twice a week the kids have swim lessons, and I help the children learn to move in the water, slipping about like discombobulated fish. The sharp tinge of chlorine makes me think of you and days spent at the pool or at the beach. Mark watches golf and during a rainy U.S. Open I hear your voice, telling me that in a lightning storm you should hold up a one iron because even God can’t hit a one iron.
Mark sings “Sugar pie, honey bunch … you know that I love you!” to Anne, and it hits me like a punch in the gut, because all of a sudden I’m with you, and your presence is so palpable I can smell your cologne.
Most days the pain of your absence has faded to a normal part of life, but days like today make it impossible to ignore.
You’ve given me so much, and now I can’t even give you these words on a piece of corny Hallmark stock.
I’m better for having been your daughter. I just wish, this time of year especially, that when I talk to you in the columbarium, you could talk back.
Love,
Angie
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