Lavina had a health fair to do in conjunction with the Chickaloon and Knik tribes at the Palmer fairgrounds, so Margie and I went and picked her up when it was all done, about 4:00 PM. Jacob and the boys came out about two hours later. The boys were asleep when he arrived and so we left them that way.
We took turns peeking into the car to see when they might wake.
Jobe woke first. He reached for me, right away.
In the past on this day, I have paid tributes to the fathers from whence we come. Today, I pay tribute to the fathers who descend from us and since one of those is my oldest son, I focus that tribute on him.
Here he is, yesterday evening, tossing my middle grandchild Jobe into the air.
Now he shows him the first frog of the season. It used to be that our yard teemed with frogs - one could hardly walk without stepping on one.
Now a frog sighting is an occasion to take note of.
Jobe does take note.
As for the oldest grandson Kalib, he still sleeps in the car.
In time, Kalib wakes up and comes back, too. The frog is still hanging out nearby, so Jacob shows it to Kalib. He invites Kalib to touch it, but Kalib is wary.
To demonstrate that this frog poses no harm, Jacob gives it a kiss.
A bit later, Jimmy begins to wander too far away for my comfort, but I am entertaining Jobe and Jobe does not want me to leave, so Jacob goes and hauls him back.
Well, I took a lot of pictures last night and my computer is acting up big time - it is headed to the repair shop tomorrow or Tuesday and if I could afford to I would just replace it because I am spending maybe 30-40 percent of the time that I work with it - and sometimes, all of the time for an hour or two straight - watching the spinning color wheel go round and round and suffering mulitiple freezeups and forced shutdowns, so it is just too exasperating to try to look at the photos I took.
It was possible to navigate my way through the spinning color wheel and crashes to the toss and frog shots, because they were clear in my memory and I knew just where to find them, and the two shots that wrap up this series were at the end of yesterday's take, but it is too much of pain to search through the others.
This one, however, just popped up on my screen as I was swearing and cursing at my computer and it was so damn cute I just grabbed it.
There are some serious people within the photographic community who dismiss cute photos as irrelevant and facile, but, damnit, cute is part of life, too.
Please take note: I am a very serious photographer and this is a very serious photograph of real and true life.
More serious stuff - my son, the dad, with his entire family, his wife and three children. Jobe is taking an ever greater interest in spatulas.
Wait a minute, the astute reader protests... your son Jacob has only two children, Kalib and Jobe... why do you say, "three?"
Remember when Jobe quit breast feeding and I noted that Jacob and Lavina had been using the breast feeding method of birth control and it would soon become apparent how well that worked out?
See that little bulge in the tummy, right behind Jobe?
That is how well that worked out.
Very well, indeed!
So here is my son, the dad, with his wife, his two children that the light now falls upon and the one that is scheduled to make a first appearance in the light of the delivery room in October.
Happy Father's Day, son!
I don't know how you ever got to be such a good dad. You didn't have the greatest example to follow and you were kind of wild there, for awhile. Yet, an excellent dad is what you have become. A little overindulgent at times, perhaps, but overindulgence is love, and infinitely superior to neglect. These kids of yours are pretty damn good kids and that didn't just happen.
I love them.
You make me proud.
And so does Lavina. Even though this is Father's Day, not Mother's Day, it has to be said.
Happy Father's Day!
To all you good dad's out there!
Young dads, old dads, dead dads like my good dad - all dads.
Happy Father's Day to you all!