My old man and the sea

I'll be the first to admit, I have a hard time winding down and resting easy.

Bedtime has always been a challenge for me, still is.

Bless my poor parents, as I was their first.

I'm sure they hadn't counted on having a no-napping, night owl infant.

But, they decided to keep going and have four others so I guess it couldn't have been all that terrible.

Lucky for all us, and our mother, we had an imaginative and engaging father.

He succeeded in injecting fun and good humor into the mundanities of everyday life, including but not limited to the basics of child rearing.

Whether it was make-believe bathroom tea parties while potty-training...

Yes, this was a thing, he and I would sip imaginary tea together while he waited patiently for me as I sat backwards on the toilet so my little-ass didn't fall in, to literally shit or get off the pot.

"Rawr", a favorite game of ours, generally played to while away the lengthy winter evenings. Sufficiently exhausteing us when our outside play was hampered by the persistent Pacific Northwest rain.

This involved turning the lights out, and creeping through the dark rooms not knowing from behind which corner he would suddenly pop out, growling and snarling like a great beast. Terrifying us all to shrieking delight and sending us scrambling back to the bedroom or whatever room had the monster-safe lights left on.

Or, teaching us fun kid-friendly dinner recipes like "tuna wiggle". Tuna noodle casserole with peas and cheese, which we all loved and devoured.

This instilled a love of cooking and family dinners in all of us from an early age, a tradition that is still honored and looked forward to by myself and my siblings on a regular basis. Three of us live in close proximity with one another. And we still get together, sometimes weekly, to cook and eat dinner as a family.

Although the menu has evolved past tuna noodle casserole into themes like "curry of the month" or "pork-belly recipes from around the world", I'm sure we would all still love and devour every last scrap of the beloved childhood dish.

Out of all of the wonderful, amazing things that my father did and taught us. I think the thing that I might be the most grateful for is introducing the delight that is classic literature, stories, and the written word in general.

My father was wise, and realized that very young children did not yet have the attention span to fully appreciate and understand the entirety of Homer's The Odyssey read aloud to them word for word right before bed, so he would introduce these stories to us gradually.

Through his own verbal retelling and re-enactments.

He had a way of making us kids feel like we were an interactive part of the greatest stories ever told.

He made little pieces of the classic tales so available to our young imaginations, so engaging, that when I finally got my hands on the actual novels I devoured them like a plate of tuna wiggle.

He would revile us with classic stories like Cyrano de Bergerac, or Don Quixote, and Journey to the Center of the Earth, all the while adding his own personal twist.

He would put on voices for the characters, and act out some of the more physical scenes.

While we would sit in rapt attention, hanging on every word.

One particular story that we would beg him to tell again and again sticks out in my mind above all the others.

And that is his retelling of Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea.

We loved hearing it, and he seemed to like telling it too.

He would cast his nets wide and reel them in with strength and gusto, searching for a catch. Enthusiastically mime a line being pulled taut with an invisible pole as he struggled with the massive marlin, whistle and crack jokes as he rocked in an imaginary boat.

Whenever he got to the shark, we would pull our feet up onto the bed to save our toes from the same fate as the giant fish.

Thinking back, he gave us quite a direct retelling of the classic novel's plot, but he enthusiastically infused Santiago with his own personality and sense of humor.

Through the years, Hemingway quickly became one of my favorite classic authors.

I was the shark, and his works, the marlin.

I stripped each novel clean, devouring every last page. No need for cheese, noodles or peas.

And I wasn't exactly surprised when I finally read The Old Man and the Sea, and realized that it didn't end with Santiago cheerfully whistling Monty Python's Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.

My father told the story as he would have lived it I like to think.

Respectfully, engagingly, and humorously.

And although our dear father is no longer a physical presence on this Earth. He succeeded in passing those traits, along with a love of stories, tales and parables, on to his children.

In the years since his passing, I think often about his rendition of The Old Man and the Sea.

And it sits with me now, how my dad's orated version of the classic story succeeded in conveying all the themes of humility, triumph of spirit, and pride of accomplishment however ironic the circumstances.

the story now feels to me thanks to my father, more about enjoying oneself in the face of struggle. And relying on and truly taking joy in, those things you carry inside of you to get you through the experience, no matter how grueling.

And I rest easier reminded of this lesson every day.

To be grateful.

To be joyful.

To be inspired.