Father's Day Blues ...

I am filled with melancholy today. It is Father's Day, and I have no earthly father. It will be five years come June 30 since my dad's passing. I know that he is in Heaven, and that understanding brings me peace, but I miss him tremendously. He was just so fun to be around. He was always in a good mood. Would put on a pot of coffee and then sit outside on the deck and talk to you until the coffee was gone. I miss those conversations. I miss the sound of his "shower clogs" tap-tap-tapping down the hall. I miss his stupid jokes: "I have a corn on my toe," and then point, to a kernel from the dinner table that'd he'd placed on his foot.
Now they're both gone. Mom died March 25. I think about her no fewer than fifty times a day. Each morning, when I awaken, when I make the bed (Mom always said: Make your bed first thing, then at least you've got something to show for each day ~). At the grocery store, passing the bags of potatoes (she was famous for her homemade potato soup, which my kids called "white soup"); reading the paper each morning (she loved the paper); while I'm cooking dinner (I used to call her to tell her what I was making; she told me what she had fixed for supper); at night, when I turn on the fan in the bedroom (Mom had to have a fan blowing directly on her).
I miss them as a couple; I miss being their child, the grown-up kid who could show up day or night, uninvited, and feel welcomed and loved.
Home is the place where, when you go there, they have to let you in. I'm not sure what famous person said that, but I like it. Because it's true.