The Dad Diaries: The beginning

My dad died 27 May 2009. The loss to our family is staggering as he was my sons' 2nd daddy. Their daddy travels alot, so their beloved PopPop and Nana came over often to help entertain. It was heaps of work for me as I then felt obliged to cook myself into a stupor for some ridiculous reason, and send them home with food for a few meals. Hey! They are elderly!
There is a post soon after Daddy's death a couple of entries down. I'm not going back to re-read it, and I can't remember how much I talked about Dad's dying. I'm not going to get all morose on your shoulder; the purpose of my coming out of hibernation for NaBloWriMo is to force myself to tell some of the adventures of living with my father for 55 years.

Which brings up another fact: YES! I am an OLD mother! I am now 56 and have 9 and 8 year old sons. My husband is 8 years younger than I. I would highly recommend it.

So, back to memory-land.
My father was an officer in the Air Force. We lived all over the world for the first 12 years of my life. If you get an opportunity to live overseas, anywhere, GRAB IT. I can tell you for a fact that you and your family will be better off for it.

We lived in Okinawa for 4 years. My family actually built a house on the island, but we moved into base housing (complete with live-in maid and gardener) within 1.5 years. The house Dad built was on a steep hill, on acreage, and we did have neighbors, albeit not in view. The house came with a surprise papasan. He showed up one day to garden and that was that. He also turned out to be a watchdog; stories started filtering in to my parents about neighbors' small appliances going missing. Turns out that it was the work of "stealie boys"; young men who would strip naked except for a mask, grease themselves with cooking oil so they could not be caught, sneak into a house and nick the irons, toasters, electric fry pans, etc, to sell on the street! One night we heard a heck of a racket outside and Papasan was getting dragged down the side of the hill; hanging on for dear life, by a nekkid, masked man! My Dad, who was stark naked himself, grabbed a couple of flyswatters and took off after them. He smacked that boy's back, haunches and backside a few times and that guy took off like a rocket down the hill. Papasan and Dad came back to the house, victorious. I stage whispered to my mom "Oh dear, Daddy forgot his panties, Mommy!" They got the neighbor's toaster and hand mixer to boot. And word got out among the Stealie Boys to avoid our hood; we had a crazy-ass WatchDad and a Papasan on alert.