Good Morning, Bill MacLean

Good morning, Dad.

I find myself wishing this morning that we were having this breakfast together. What would we bicker about today if you were here? Perhaps the quality of the chicken sausage, where it came from, whether or not it was healthy. No…actually I don’t remember hearing you talk about these types of things.

The blackberries…me trying to get you eat blackberries…no. You liked berries. That’s right, I do remember now. You pointed out the huckleberries to us on the path to Smugglers Cover at Cannon Beach.

I know. You would remind me of the first time I ate French Toast. How I said I wouldn’t like it. How I pretended not to like it – squished my face up like I had swallowed a lemon. You would remind me that you saw my secret smile and my inadvertent shock of delight. You would glory in it. And I would roll my eyes and moan and groan and tell you to “shuuuuuutt uuuuppp…”

I would have to tell you to please stop doing your rain dance in the yard. It’s already raining! You don’t need to do a rain dance when it’s raining, Dad.

I would ask you a simple question and get a tirade of scientific and highly technical information in response. I would try to pretend I was listening, the whole time simply staring at your big, round bulb of a nose. “Where on earth did you get such a nose?” I’d be thinking. “Is my nose going to get that big someday? Good God.”

You might sing. You’d sing my name all sing-songy to your own tune, or you would sing about what we were going to do that day, to the tune of the Howdy Doody theme song. “It’s going driving time, it’s going driving time! We’re driving to the store! Doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo!” I would remind you that you really can’t sing worth a damn.

You’d tell me what was happening behind the evil government’s closed doors. What sort of schemes they were up to this time. Reminding me that the end is near and that freedom isn’t free. We’ll tell those bastards we’re Americans, dammit. We know who we are…where we can and cannot go, what we can buy and sell. We’ll never forget.

“None of that matters since the aliens are coming to blow it all up anyways, right, Dad?” You’d be my own personal Agent Mulder.

It’s still raining. Drops break open against my empty plate. They mix with the syrup. My meal is done. It’s time to put my shoes on – tie the laces up myself (I don’t do it the cheater way like my sis does). I’m gonna go outside, and work in the rain. And with all my heart try to hope and just believe that you’re still up there, Somewhere, telling me what to do…