It’s a day to fete our fathers.
I think most of you know why there are scant references to my father in this forum, so suffice it to say that to me, Father’s Day is a grim reminder of days long gone – decades in fact. I have not seen my father in over four decades after he announced on Christmas Day 1983 he was tired of the family and living here, then abruptly abandoned my mother to embark on a new life, but not before taking all the money out of their joint bank and long-term annuity funds, then fleeing the country to Germany and leaving her penniless at 57 years old. I was 27.
Yes, what a guy.
Thereafter, I designated Mom as both my mother AND father. I consider him dead to me, but if he is alive he would be 97 years old.
Recently I spent an afternoon immersed in the treasure trove of greeting cards exchanged between Mom and me through the years to write my Mother’s Day post. In doing so, I read some of those Father’s Day cards given to Mom from 1984 through 2009, the last Father’s Day she was alive.
Today’s post won’t recap a quarter century of Father’s Day cards, nor will it serve to dwell on my somewhat tarnished paternal memories; instead I am going to use the beautiful song “Sunrise, Sunset” in which a father reflects on just how quickly the years have passed now that his daughter is grown. The song was sung at her wedding and is from the 1971 musical “Fiddler on the Roof” which I saw at the movies with my parents that same year. Click here for Perry Como’s version of that tune.
Here are a few of the poignant lyrics:
Sunrise, sunset
Sunrise, sunset
Swiftly flow the days
Seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers
Blossoming even as we gaze
Sunrise, sunset
Sunrise, sunset
Swiftly fly the years
One season following another
Laden with happiness and tears
While I am inclined to disparage my father and do not ever wish to be associated with him, it was not always that way.
My parents were married June 11, 1953 …
… three years before I was born.
A line in the song “Sunrise, Sunset” says: “is this the little girl I carried?”
Growing up as an only child, it was Mom who was the disciplinarian and I was “Daddy’s Little Princess” which I thought meant something special at the time.
A tattered picture from long ago – the tattered memories would come decades later.
Christmas Day is a day to make memories with your family like here circa 1959, not a day to announce you want a new life.
I was not spoiled, but my parents were very strict with me.
Mom and Dad were not the Rockefellers, but I did not want for anything.
I had a happy childhood and teenage years. This photo was taken on my Sweet 16th birthday.
My parents provided me with a brand-new car after high school graduation so they did not worry about me breaking down coming home from school or when out with friends.
They told me I could pursue any college curriculum I desired and they would pay my tuition costs through graduation.
Too bad I never found a job to use that B.A. degree in Mass Communications, so I was repeatedly told by my father “I could have bought myself a T-Bird and your mother a mink coat for what I paid for your education!” But I digress ….
Mom and Dad encouraged me to travel and see the world before beginning a career and/or starting a family because “after all, you are only young once.”
I embraced that idea bigtime in my 20s.
All money/tips I earned while waitressing at the diner throughout college were used for personal expenses, mostly travel, clothing and entertainment.
This was the last photo taken with my father, New Year’s Eve 1982. My parents had a small party with some friends in the basement and I made a guest appearance. Yes, you can see I looked just like him (except six inches taller). I may have his last name, but do not have his disposition, nor any of his traits, notably I am not a racist and I am trustworthy and honest.
There is a old adage that says: “We are too soon old and too late smart.”
I stopped being “Daddy’s Little Princess” long ago.
Sunrise, sunset
Sunrise, sunset
Swiftly fly the years
One season following another
Laden with happiness and tears
This bittersweet post is a bit of a twist on Terri Webster Schrandt’s Sunday Stills Photo Challenge: Sunrises and Sunsets.
Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there!
Linda Schaub
WALKIN', WRITIN', WIT & WHIMSY 
What a great way to work Father’s day into the sunset/rise theme this week, especially with the song in mind. I love that movie and its songs and message. I’m sorry your dad abruptly left you. That must have been a shock. You said he went to Germany. Maybe it’s the glasses, but he looks Germanic.
Your parents took good care of your financially, something mine couldn’t do. It’s amazing how much life happens in between the sunrise and sunset.
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Thank you Terri. I thought using that beautiful song would be a good idea for this theme. I was going to use the version from the movie, but it was quite long.
It was a shock when my father announced he was leaving. The abrupt manner in which he left and what he did to my mom financially leaves a very bitter taste in my mouth. Luckily, the house had been paid off years before, but she had not worked since 1956, just before I was born and she was too young to collect Social Security. You are correct – he is/was (not sure if he’s alive) German. He was born and raised in Frankfurt, Germany, was in the German army in WWII and then went to trade school to become a tool and diemaker, then moved to Toronto, Ontario in 1950 and obtained dual citizenship.
Yes, my parents were good to me but I was never spoiled growing up. I consider myself lucky that despite how things turned out, I was raised right and had opportunities that not all kids nor young adults have.
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I feel sorry for you for being abandoned by your Dad. Sad! I keep forgetting it’s Father’s Day. We have no one alive to celebrate, so we’ve ignored the day. I’ve spent all day with Kate, enjoying having her here.
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Thank you Ann. I don’t think of Father’s Day anymore since he is gone, but more so since my mom is gone as I treated the day like a second Mother’s Day for her and we had fun with it. We also had a very nice next-door neighbor named Jim, who moved in with his family a year or so after my father left. He was a true Southern gentleman, born and raised in Kentucky and helped out with little things in the house, kind of like your neighbors do and Jim tried to teach me some handyman-type things. So every Father’s Day I gave him a “You’re Like a Dad” card. They moved from here in 1990 and Marge and her husband moved after that. He used to call Mom and me, then just me. He passed away from pancreatitis. You had a nice way to spend today.
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How marvelous that you had Jim!!
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Jim was like a father to me after my father left. He was kind and patient and always willing to help both my mom and me with anything we needed inside or outside the house. He was horrified what my father did. He also was angry that my father had never taught me how to do things that he had taught his daughter to do, like change a tire (well, I have always had road service as I explained to him). The funniest thing was when the full-serve gas attendant was pumping my gas and I had a locking gas cap. I passed him the key to open the cap to put in gas. When he locked it back up, he accidentally dropped it into the window well when handing me the key. I had an extra key on my key ring, but when I told Jim the story what happened he said well, we’ll just take the door panel off together and get that key for you. So he showed me how to take the door panel off with an allan wrench and we got the key … took all afternoon to get it though. 🙂 I think I have mentioned him before in my blog, but just searched and nothing came up. I only have the photo from the funeral home of him to use.
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What a very special man he was!!
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Yes he was Anne – you would have liked him too.
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I can’t understand how a father and husband could just up and leave like. All I can say is that it was his loss. and even though you never worked in your field of study I’m sure you paid back you parents many times over by taking care of your mother, which should have been his responsibility. I loved all the pictures you shared. You are such a beautiful person.
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Thank you Ruth for all your nice comments – they mean a lot to me. It bothered my mother that he didn’t contact me. She thought that was terrible and she often mentioned it, not only to me, but to friends of the family, saying she did not understand why someone would just forget their only child, their flesh and blood.
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It’s hard to imagine anyone leaving their family like your father did; not only did he move across the world, but he selfishly assured that your mother would struggle. As Ruth said, it’s his loss. Obviously, your mother came through for you despite her challenges.
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Yes Janis, my mother came through despite what he did and I wish I’d have thought to use the word “selfish” in this post as that perfectly describes anyone who does this after 30 years of marriage. He felt entitled I guess. It made my mom angry he never contacted me, but it didn’t bother me as I was disgusted with him.
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I can understand why Fathers Day doesn’t mean much to you Linda. Your father let you both down after he lead you both astray.
Celebrate the good times and forget about the rest.
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You are 100% right with this comment, from top to bottom Wayne. When I scanned in all my albums, I could not remove the photos on some of the pages, so I just scanned in the entire page or I would not have had those early photos of me with my father. .
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It’s hard to hit the like button on this one. I’m so sorry for the hurt and sadness that this must have caused both you and your Mother. I like that you chose to celebrate your Mom on both Mother’s and Father’s Day. That was very honoring to her.
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Thank you for saying that Rebecca. What happened with my father made us even closer and I decided this was a good way of honoring my mom because surely something good had to come out of all of this.
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You have done a fine job of honoring fathers our there despite your own experience.
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Thank you Anne. As angry as I am with him, I will always concede that I did get opportunities that some of my peers did not have, so for that I am grateful.
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There are so many split homes anymore, That was a horrible thing for him to do, leaving a family penniless. My father left us when I was just a baby. But, our grandparents took us in, which I know wasn’t easy for them at their age. My father did contact me when he was on his death bed to say he was sorry. It was fine to hear, but he was just a stranger to me by then. You turned out to be a wonderful woman and took care of your mother. You really did do a lot of traveling back then. I love seeing the old photos, as I have said before. Just to see the clothes and the furniture. Brings back memories. 😉
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Yes, he had no right to do that Sandra. My mom worked up until she had me, so for three years while they were married, then was a stay-at-home mom, which most mothers were back in those days. Also, my grandfather was a hateful man who disparaged my mom and my grandmother – so I have no use for either of them and my mom deserved better than this.
I have personally known three young women whose husbands left them – one a friend and the other two co-workers. Of those three women, one got a note after they left; the other two women’s spouses just walked out on them and one trashed the house first. All three of them had young children to raise and none of those husbands ever paid a penny of child support, nor did they ever try to connect with their families. They went to other states to start new lives. Back then I guess it was not as easy to track down people or perhaps hiring a private eye to do this was costly, so all three women got no child care and found jobs to support the family, then moved on. This defection made my mom and I closer.
As to the old photos, when I scanned in all my photo albums and scrapbooks back in 2017, it was not my intention to scan in any of his photos. But most of the photo albums had multiple photos on each page and there were photos I wanted to keep, so I scanned in the entire page. Most of the photos I scanned in are still raw images and I have to enlarge or tweak them somehow to be a proper size. That is another project for down the road. Someday I’ll have full-sized images in albums … it will be a huge project, but at least I have them separated in categories for family, trips, miscellaneous to use in my blog or look at now. P.S. – the styles back then for clothes, furniture – all of it versus now really are fun to see.
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Linda, I remember how shocked and sad I was the first time you shared your father’s story with me. It’s still hard to believe a man could do such a terrible thing. But you and your mother had each other and managed to have a good life, one full of love in spite of his selfish act of abandonment. You have a remarkable story there of healing and of overcoming adversity. I’m glad you honored your mother by making father’s day a second mother’s day. She deserved it!
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Thank you for saying this Barbara. It is not only a sad story, but also a cringeworthy story. Through the years, if the subject of family came up when meeting new people, I just said my father “was no longer with us” and left it at that, which could have been perceived that he had passed away. I refuse to honor him in any way, but I do concede that his abandonment came long after I was an adult, way past my formative years, but still – you do not just walk away from 30 years of marriage and steal all the money – that is just wrong. Mom and I did survive and were stronger for doing so. I began the Father’s Day cards in 1984 and continued them through 2009, the year before she passed away. Most were heartfelt cards, but I did sneak a few funny ones in there as well.
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Wow that’s quite a post..loving seeing all the old photos, and the stories that tie them together…
I get a bit of that dead to u thing…my dad buggered off to Kazakhstan a month before my folks 50th anniversary never to return…found a new life apparently. People eh…
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People eh indeed Michael! Well, you sure have me beat with your dad leaving on the cusp of their 50th wedding anniversary, never to return. I thought 30 years was horrible enough. You have to wonder whether it is some mid-life crisis that makes this happen? I love looking at old photos too and I am lucky that my parents, even my grandparents, took a lot of photos, as did I over the years. It took me all four days of Thanksgiving holiday weekend 2017 to scan in all my family, travel and scrapbook albums. And they are not really properly digitized, just raw images, sometimes six on one page, so I have to tweak them a bit to use them. It’s fun to look back at those pics … I refuse to call the photos I am in “vintage” … not yet anyway. 🙂
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Sone things just never make sense…doesn’t matter how we try.
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You’ve got that right Michael. What happened to having a conscience? SMH over it all.
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Interesting story. Your mother was a trooper. My dad died when I was 10 and my mom was 45. She had been a stay-at-home mom at the time. I know how hard it was for her to find a job to support us. Was your mom truly surprised? It’s so hard to imagine that he woke up one day and left. It had to be premeditated with the emptying of the assets. Good thing he couldn’t take the house on his back.
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Yes Kate, I was proud of my mom’s resilience after my father left. I like your comment that good thing he couldn’t take the house on his back – yes, he would have done that too. Luckily the house was free and clear and my parents had never made me pay room and board after I graduated from college and was working, so it was time for me to step up to the plate. My mom asked if I thought we could manage taking care of the house together – I had never done any of the outside “chores” … I said “of course we can!” And we did.
As to my father’s demeanor, he was German and his mindset pretty much was anything not German was inferior … my mother was not German BTW. My father was a tool and diemaker and if he worked in a European or German-run plant, all was good, unless someone criticized him – then he quit. He felt that people hated him because of his nationality and he was argumentative as well. A year or so before he left, he quit his job, could not find another job around here, but did find one in Ohio, about an hour away. He got an apartment there and came home on weekends, arriving here on Saturday afternoon. My mom made him meals to take back for all week, we got groceries for him as well and she did his laundry, etc. He was sullen, didn’t speak much, but one thing he did was started wearing a large cross around his neck. He also started buying monthly astrology books and poring over them the entire time he was home. She one time told him he was nuts over this and he flew into a rage. He told my mother never to touch them. After he left, she opened the books – he had made notations throughout the books. Okay, lots of people follow their horoscopes, mostly for fun though. This was some new thing with him. And, after he left, I was downstairs one day and saw a piece of paper poking out of the dropped ceiling. Our basement was half-finished in that one photo on New Year’s Eve 1982 – but in the Summer of 1983, my parents had it paneled, a large cedar closet put in and the laundry room and pantry room sectioned off from the rest of the basement. Anyway, I pushed the ceiling panel up and found envelopes with letters to and from a woman named “Miss Connie” – she was an astrologer of some sort, lived out of state and he was asking her advice on starting a new life – she “counseled” him to “go for it.” Too bad I didn’t find this stuff before. He kept it hidden not only in the rafters above the dropped ceiling, but he also had a post office box we didn’t know about either as evident from the address. Lots of secretive stuff ….
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You were both better off without him.
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Yes, I agree with you.
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I am so sorry to read about the pain your dad caused your mom and you. Sometimes, it’s better to leave toxic people out of our lives, even if we are related to that person.
I loved seeing all those pictures of your travels in your 20s. Do you ever hope to repeat some of those trips or maybe visit some new places?
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Thank you Laurie. I have never understood the attraction between my parents. They never seemed to like-minded. He had a temper, she did not, but sometimes she would give it to him back and I had to hear their arguments; it was the same with my grandparents, in which my sweet grandmother was married to a bully. I’ve written about my grandfather before and how I bit him on the ankle as he called me stupid for mispronouncing a word in French. He was French Canadian; I was learning Parisian-style French. Well, maybe opposites attract. I don’t know, but I made up my mind I would not make the same mistake as they did and my great-grandmother did as well. Since he left, I consider him dead to me.
I’m glad you liked the travel photos – I was trying to pick a few representative of landmarks people would know. I always traveled by myself – none of my friends were interested in traveling, so I would travel with a tour group. Every year I took a big trip and I had already booked a tour in Italy for 1984, which I ended up cancelling. So Italy, France and Alaska are still on my bucket list of places to go. It’s not quite as simple as before when I lived at home with no concerns over the house in my absence. Also, right now I don’t have a current passport. I still would like to travel one day to those three places and also to visit New England too.
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I hope you get to go to Italy, France, Alaska and New England.
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Thank you. I hope so too one day Laurie.
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I enjoyed your old photos, but, what a terrible thing your father did! 😧 You and your mother must have been horribly traumatized by such a betrayal. I love that you celebrated both Mother’s Day and Father’s Day with her and were able to go on with your lives. 💞 At least you had a relatively happy childhood and all those travel opportunities!
I thought your name was German – also my heritage, and I live in suburban Toronto. Something else we have in common. 🙂
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Thank you Debbie. I love using old photos in my blog. I have a lot of photos, not only my family, but my grandparents and some from my great-grandparents as well.
It is terrible what my father did and suddenly to just up and leave after 30 years of marriage, but also to take all the money out of the bank and long-term annuity funds, essentially leaving her penniless. Luckily she had the house.
I do agree that I had a happy childhood and I was lucky to get my education paid for, plus the car, so all the money I earned while working through college at a diner, I kept for myself, mostly for travel and photography as well and other fun things.
My father was born in Frankfurt, Germany and moved to Toronto in 1950. Then he applied for dual citizenship. I am still a Canadian citizen, not American. I am here as a permanent resident alien with a green card since we moved here in July 1966 from Oakville. We moved from Toronto to Oakville when I was two. I have only been back to Canada a couple of times after my grandmother passed away in 1986. I don’t have a current passport, so I can’t cross the border.
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OMG! Coincidence number 3. I have lived in Oakville since 1969. 😎 Yes, good thing your mother had the house and it was paid off. I have used a lot of old photos on my blog as well. My childhood was dysfunctional but I married young and got out early. There’s a lot of cathartic writing about that… and for me, Mother’s Day is a bit triggering. 😝 It’s too bad George W. Bush brought in that passport legislation, but I always keep mine current. We used to do a LOT of travelling. Maybe we can compare travelogues one of these days! It looks like you have been to some of the same places. 🙂
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That’s an amazing coincidence (number 3) Debbie!
See, for you, cathartic writing would be your mom, whereas it was my dad. I mentioned what he did one time in a Mother’s Day post, but not to the extent I did yesterday.
Coincidence number 4 would be if you now live on Sandmere Place! My father worked at the Ford Oakville Plant and he asked to be transferred to the Ford Woodhaven Michigan plant and so we moved here. Mom was heartbroken as she had family and friends (now all gone); he had no family, so I don’t think he understood (or cared). I follow a couple of group sites on Facebook about Oakville, but honestly, I was just ten when we moved here so I don’t remember all that much about stores or places they reference in the “Oakville Experience: If you grew up in Oakville” site, however, I went to E.A. Orr Elementary School and they have a Facebook site and I connected with a girl (Margaret Rust) who was in kindergarten with me, standing next to each other in our class photo. I did a post about “meeting her” all these years later. And I had Googled our address, 497 Sandmere Place when I first tried Google Maps and the neighborhood was not the same and I knew it wasn’t just a faded memory. My mom drilled my address and phone number into my head before I started school, so I mentioned this to someone who still lives in Oakville. He is a computer guy who goes to various sites around Oakville and ge told me they razed all the houses on Sandmere to build big, two-story houses a while back. They reconfigured the neighborhood. He even went to the neighborhood and took a photo of the “new” 497 Sandmere Place and sent me a link to a recent realtor listing to show me how it looks now. I was amazed. This was a new subdivision when we moved there, so I was surprised they just tore it all down. We were near the curve of the street and the cross-street was Tansley Drive. That I remember. E.A. Orr is now a retirement home.
I should have kept my passport current too – it is very complicated now because since I have no relatives in Canada, I must have a Canadian who knows me (through my signature AND a picture) and they have to verify it, or I have to go through the Consulate. I wanted to renew my passport in advance of my green card renewal next year. My fingerprints are all worn down, so even ink prints aren’t that good, so I had to go through a lot of trouble to renew it last time in 2015 before it was finally approved by the Department of Homeland Security and the card was issued. I have lived in the same house since we moved here, never been in trouble with the law – it boggles my mind.
Yes, that would be nice to compare travelogues. I had a trip to Italy already planned for 1984, but I cancelled it due to what happened and have not been abroad since my last trip the Summer of 1983.
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Debbie, I just took a quick spin on your blog – wow! I have a good friend and former co-worker named Ilene Newman who is now in her 80s, but once was active in showing her dogs in tracking events, as well as judging in tracking events. She lives in Kingsville, but used to go to many places in the U.S. and Canada for these events. She was also the person who trained the police dogs in Windsor for the very first canine academy! She brought in articles from “The Windsor Star” to work for me to read one day.
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I live in the “low rent district”, aka central Oakville, but know where Sandmere is – in the Hopedale Mall area, yes? I was 14 when my parents and I moved here from Germany, where we had lived 1965-69. Before that was London, Ont. My father was also German descent, but Canadian military. My mother was German and I was born in Germany. You won’t believe the development hell Oakville has been in for many years now! My old house on Rebecca St. and high school (G.E. Perdue) are long gone.
Too bad it’s such a hassle to get your passport renewed, but surely the consulate can help? I know, American security is a bit over-the-top, but after 9/11 (which triggered the passport legislation), I suppose it’s understandable. Still, I hope it works out and you’ll get to travel again. My husband is Italian and has family in Italy, so we’ve visited a few times. You would love it there! Bella Italia 💖.
Thanks for dropping by my website! Interesting story about your friend. She must be an excellent dog trainer.
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Debbie, when I lived on Sandmere Place I don’t recall it was all that fancy. When we moved there in 1959, it was a brand-new subdivision. There was no grass, just clay, no fenced-in backyards and only a gravel road and gravel driveways. It was still a gravel road/driveways when we left. Yes, it was near Hopedall Mall. There were lots of kids living on Sandmere Place and we were all around the same age, give or take a year. We all played together in a small woodsy area, with a creek running through a meadow. We played there all Summer and weekends. The Hopedale Mall opened up not long after we moved there. I have a photo of me taken at the grand opening. I am sure I would not recognize anything there now. I see pictures of Coronation Park that are very beautiful. I know we went but don’t remember it looking that beautiful then. That is what the computer guy who is the E.A. Orr site administrator said – everything has changed and my street was razed to build bigger houses.
Yes, the passport is a hassle, but the green card is really a hassle. How nice visiting Italy so often. Our next-door neighbors on Sandmere (the Francones) had just moved there right from Italy and spoke very little English, but we still could communicate. We used to go back and visit them about once a year.
Your website is very interesting and I will visit again – it was late and I was still up until after midnight as we had severe weather due in the 11:00 p.m. hour. Severe weather all this week due to the heat wave. I mentioned Ilene as I thought your paths might have crossed at some time. She only retired from tracking about ten years ago – she is down to two dogs now. When we worked together, I recall she had a dozen dogs at one time, some used for tracking, a few were strictly pets, Golden Retrievers mostly, a few Shepherds.
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West Oakville has become pretty upscale now. Hopedale Mall is practically deserted, with only a grocery, drug store and a few others still in residence. Zellers disappeared years ago. Then Target came in and also disappeared. As with most buildings in Oakville, I’m sure it will be torn down eventually, to make way for more condos. 😝
Coronation Park is fantastic now, after major renovations! From November to February, it’s decorated with beautiful light displays. I showcased some of them in a December Sunday Stills post last year.
I’m glad you like my website. Thank you! 🙂 I spend a good portion of my time maintaining it and crafting posts. An all-consuming hobby, since 2009! 😆
I don’t know your friend, but she has obviously accomplished many good things in the dog world. I used to walk dogs all over town, but when that got too rugged (can’t take the winter cold!), I switched to home boarding only. My house was full of dogs for many years. 🐾🐾🐾
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Hopedale Mall was a novelty when it opened. I think the only mall experience before that was Oak Queen Mall. I can remember as a kid we went to downtown Oakville when my mom got her hair done. Her hairdresser was a woman named Peggy whose clientele also included doing the hair of the deceased at the local funeral home. My father and I would wait for her next door at a candy store. I wasn’t allowed to eat candy except for holidays, but once a month I’d get those black Scottie dogs pure licorice. I’ve mentioned that to people over here and I guess it wasn’t a thing here.
I think on the Oakville Facebook site, which is mostly memories, they have shown some photos of the current Coronation Park at Christmastime. There is a photographer who posts on that site – beautiful work. I see photos of the harbor as well.
I have not tweaked my site in a while. I am using the Twenty Ten template and chose it as it was easy. I set it up over a weekend in February 2013 and added a gallery and some sidebar items about five years ago, but that’s it. I’ve only been retired a couple of months and trying to get things done in the house and get out and walk and take photos so maybe this Winter I’ll retool it a little.
Ilene loves dogs … this year she lost the last one of her dozen she had awhile back and is down to two now. Her new Shepherd, Oliver, was destined for a shelter because its owner was abusing it and a family member mentioned it to Ilene, so she asked if she could have him and she also has a Chocolate Lab from a family member who could no longer take care of it.
A house filled with dogs is a happy house I’m sure!
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This was a great way to use the theme and share your stories about your parents and disappointments. How cool you got to travel all those places when you did!!
(My mother once told me she wanted me to have that song at my wedding. No way, I said! Too gloomy.)
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Thank you Eilene! I had to scramble and be creative to be able to do the theme since I don’t have any sunrise/sunset pics, so I remembered this song and here we are. It does have kind of a dirge feel to it, but it’s also very true how time goes speeding by. I have my issues about him, but through the formative years, those that really counted, at least he wasn’t missing like Harry Chapin’s dad in “Cat’s in the Cradle” was.
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A sad, yet clever way to intertwine sunrises and sunsets. Perfect song. I remember your stories about your dad. It’s hard to imagine what you went through, and your mom. Your resilience is commendable. And your desires to not know him beyond the years he was there being ‘dad’ the way he did are fitting. I love how you highlighted the highs of the moments that weren’t as bad as those after his leaving and that you were able to travel and enjoy life before he left you and your mom. The photos you’ve kept are treasures – especially all of the ones with your beautiful smile! You posed like a movie star or model – you rocked your height well – 🥰😍🤗
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Thank you Shelley for this nice comment. I thought about that song and since I had no sunrise or sunset photos to use, this was my next-best option and it gave me a chance to use a few of the photos taken with my father back when the relationship was still special – some of those photos are over 60 years old. I scanned in tons of photos on an Epson color flatbed scanner, but, if I had to do it over, I would have bought a hand-held scanner. Because many of the photos are under plastic overlays and I couldn’t risk damaging the photo by removing the overlay, I had to scan in the entire page, sometimes upside down or sideways to get all the pics copied. One day I will go through the blog and do screenshots of the pics I have used. Eventually I would like to have a complete set of all the family, travel and scrapbook albums – that might take years. I would not necessarily have kept the photos of him and me, but there were other photos on the page. This is probably the last time I’ll have photos of him on here. He is/was (not sure he is alive) 5′ 3″ tall and my mom was 5′ 2″ tall. When I wore glasses I looked just like him – same color hair. He once wanted me to cut my hair so he could have a toupee mad from it – exactly same dirty blonde color. I said “no”.
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You’re welcome, Linda. It’s cathartic to work through the emotions we’ve carried through the years as we look at old photos. I’m impressed with your efforts to organize the photos and determine the ones you want to keep.
How you are so tall is a mystery to me. But, you wear it well and look so happy in those photos! I’m with you on the NO for the toupee 🙄 oh, boy…
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Yes, a lot of the pictures are from so long ago. When I scanned them all in, I just did them en masse and didn’t separate each image – it took me all four days of Thanksgiving weekend 2017. I bought an HP printer/scanner when I got the first laptop in 2009. I had Geek Squad come to set up my wireless and configure the connection to the printer/scanner while he was at it. The tech said the printer and laptop weren’t communicating but the scanner was. I never printed off anything for work, so I just kept it anyway. So I got out some albums in 2010 to scan some photos for a Facebook album after I connected with some high school friends and they said “show us pictures – we’ve not seen you since 1973.” The photos were okay, but not all that clear, but when I opened the albums, the binding on some of the albums just tore away and came out of the albums. They were Hallmark albums so I was mad. I can’t put those albums back together, so most of them are just loose in boxes in the bottom of a closet. Also, I keep hearing that photos fade over time and so I went ahead and bought the color scanner and scanned in everything, just as blogging was taking off – I got my first follower around that time.
It was always a joke about me being so tall. My maternal grandparents were both short. My father said his mother was tall, but not as tall as me. I’m an oddity. Yes the toupee – SMH.
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You’re wise to have scanned all those photos. We have a lot of photos that are in boxes that I should someday do the same. That someday list sure gets longer every year! Photos do fade, although, I have photos my grandmother took in the 30s-60s that are still okay – I have them stored in a cedar chest, perhaps that makes a difference.
You’re not odd, you were blessed with height genes! 🥰
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I did worry about the integrity of the photos as time went on and especially after some of those albums literally fell apart. I hear ads for Legacy Box which is what I would think of doing had I not scanned them in already – they send you a box and you send all your photos in the box and they scan in everything and send it back to you. You can also do that at Walgreens, which might be good so that you don’t worry they get lost in the mail, HOWEVER, when I went on a Panama Canal Cruise, I took lots of photos on the 35mm. I got up very early to get a good spot on the ship that was not in the direct sun as the passage takes about eight plus hours, depending on the weather. I took two rolls of film, just on the transit and the in-house one-hour photo place lost those two rolls of film.
I like that “height genes”. 🙂
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That’s SO sad that you lost those two rolls of film. Reminds me of the tale of our honeymoon – Mr. was taking the photos with his camera that had film too and he didn’t know that the film wasn’t advancing so we have very few photos of some of the fun adventures at Disney (it was my first time there and he wanted to catch many moments).
Glad you liked the genes comment! 😊
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That’s a shame for you Shelley. This was a two-week cruise and all the single travelers were put at the same table in the dining room for all our meals. I think there were four of us and two guys traveling together. One person was the ship’s photographer. He gave me some pointers to shoot manually, but I just used automatic and said “I don’t want to have the photos not come out.” Kind of like my mindset now. So ironically, I had two rolls of film go missing at the one-hour photo place and they only reimburse you for a roll of film (if you read the fine print and no one does). Anyway, I wrote to him in care of the ship and asked if I could buy the ship transit photos of the canal if he took any and I’d pay postage … it took forever to get to the ship/him and he wrote back just giving to me. He mostly took photos of the passengers and posted them on a huge wall and if you wanted your photos, you contacted him, so these were just general pics of the ship doing the transit. He said he felt sorry for me, so I was lucky he gave them to me. Not the whole eight-hour passage, just the main points of the journey. I did like the genes comment!
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Oh Linda, this is a beautiful and also heartbreaking story. Thank you for sharing. Family relationships can be so complicated sometimes. I love the photos you shared and how you referenced the song lyrics.
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Thank you so much Kirstin. I am glad you liked this story, as cringeworthy as it ended up. Yes, family relationships are often fragile and complicated and I saw that within my own family as well as my maternal grandparents. I am lucky to have a lot of photos taken over the years and I am glad I digitized them to use in my blog or just to look at sometimes. I never looked at the photo albums as I kept them in boxes in the bottom of a closet, so this is much nicer now. That is a very poignant song and so true how fast time goes by.
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I admire your frank account and your willingness to share this story, Linda, especially on Father’s Day. Those early father/daughter pictures belie what was to come. For a parent to up and leave without explanation – especially in that generation – seems rare. Maybe it happened more than I realized and simply wasn’t made public. I love your connecting “Sunrise, Sunset” to your personal memories. “Fiddler…” is one of those movies (like “The Sound of Music”) my kids will probably never fully appreciate. The world has simply changed too much since those days and “traditions”.
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Thank you Dave for your nice comment. I had mentioned my father’s abandonment of my mother after 30 years of marriage briefly in my 2019 Mother’s Day post, but decided to expound on it more in this post weaving it into the song’s theme. It was a terrible thing my father did and yes, it was not that common 40 years ago. Mom and I were both better off on our own. I think that “Sunrise, Sunset” was perfect to reflect on these memories, especially the earliest ones when I was young. I remember that song “Tradition” and how it is shouted out in “Fiddler” … I think tradition(s) are slowly and sadly becoming something from the past. Thank goodness Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter family get-togethers still exist, hopefully for a long time.
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Miss Linda………………………………….yes I was surprised that you did do a Father’s Day special about your Dad………………………………I know over the years that you had no fond memories of him………………………….it’s a very shame that he never got to know you at all being so smart and a wonderful photographer and story teller……………………….you were and are a very attractive lady especially when you were young………………..you have very attractive pictures of yourself…………………..Congratulations!!
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Ann Marie – you are right that this was an unusual post given how I feel about my father. This will likely be the last post I ever do about him. I did mention his defection in my Mother’s Day post from five years ago. Thank you for all your kind words. I chose the last photo taken with him to show how much I looked like him, especially when I wore glasses, before getting contact lenses. After he left, when I would wear my glasses, my mom said she could see so much resemblance that it was uncanny, if not disturbing.
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I’m glad you and your mother survived.You found the good in life again and retained your positive traits instead of just sinking into the bitterness. You win.
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Yes, we did win in the end Zazzy and were better off just the two of us.
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A perfect take on the prompt. I like your photos, thanks for sharing them and your story here. I realize you didn’t have the longterm relationship with your father that you might have hoped for, but you’ve framed the experience in a way that suggests you’ve come to terms with it.
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Thank you Ally. Yes, over the years, I’ve come to terms with it and though any feelings I might have had for him are long gone, I concede I was provided a good life in my formative years and into adulthood.
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I am so sorry to hear what your Father did Linda. You never know what happens in families or how things play out. I’m glad you had such a wonderful relationship with your Mom. Your pictures bring back memories as we are about the same age.
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Thank you Susan … you’re right that you never know what happens to people and just what makes them tick sometimes. We were shocked but my mom was better off in the long run. We did have a close relationship. I didn’t purposely scan in photos of him when I digitized my albums in 2017, but because the album pages were large and had plastic overlay sheets, I couldn’t scan the photos separately, so I have those photos of us together through the years and I have to re-size/tweak photos from each page. It is a long process which I only have been doing as I use them in blog posts. You and I being about the same age, had the same type of homes and clothing styles as well I’m sure.
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Yes we did have the same everything! I miss those days, the way people were and how they acted.
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I do too Susan – people were kinder and not only that, I think we were happier in general, not just kids, everyone. I know it is not my imagination – it was a gentler time.
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I agree and no it’s not your imagination for sure. I miss those times 😦
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I am disheartened every day with how this world is.
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How can anyone do that? To take all the money too! This only proves what a strong woman your mom was to overcome something so devastating not to mention a fabulous mom! I will always admire you for taking care of your mom and always being there for her as well. Dang you were one hot lady in your twenties (and still are) you must have needed a bat to fight off the men! 😉
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I know Diane – it was extremely selfish for him to do that and it was an account with joint signatures for the long-term funds, so that was essentially stealing. We learned later that he lied and said his wife was out of the country with her sick mother, so they approved him taking the funds with one signature. Thank you – my mom and I were always close, despite the fact she was the disciplinarian in the family and was stricter with me than my father was, but this brought us even closer. I am glad we were made stronger, each of us, by this ordeal. But she had enough heartache in her life with the car accident at age 11 and 42 operations over the years, most as a teen through young adult, as a result of it. As to him, it is four decades ago and sometimes it seems longer – sometimes it seems like he was never here. Thank you for the compliment – I never needed a bat to fight off the men though. I made my mind up I would not end up like my mom, nor my grandmother (my grandfather was a bully) nor my great-grandmother (who died before I was born, but I understand was also married to a “piece of work”). : ) My mom was disappointed in me for that mindset and said “please don’t go to your grave with the same name you came into the world with!!!
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You don’t have to be married or have a partner in your life to be happy! I think you are doing just fine! There are plenty of married people that are unhappy so just enjoy your single life! My daughter said half the patients she sees do nothing but complain about their spouses. She said she is never getting married. 🤣
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I agree with you Diane … I enjoy my life and for years I tried to impress that fact upon my mom who believed it was her fault (not his fault) for my decision. I am laughing at your daughter’s comment. 🙂 The thing is, I know there are couples out there, who ARE devoted to one another. My parents had two couples they were friendly with – in both cases, the husbands adored their wives. I was so disappointed my mom could not have found someone to treat her that way.
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