Dad Builds a Rock Garden (Tom)

Told by Tom:

Grandma Somers wanted a rock garden in her yard. (According to our mom, going to St. Quentin back in the day was like going into the wild, wild, west with dirt everywhere. There were no flowers, no trees, no grass. Our grandma liked beauty and had the only house with greenery.) Dad didn't really want to build a rock garden, but he wanted to make his mom happy. He told grandma that he was going fishing with his brothers and then he had to go to work. He would pick up some rocks in the stream and put them in the trunk of his car. He got home from fishing and grandma had had a load of rock dumped off in the yard, but dad had to go to work. So grandma had our Uncle Al make her the rock garden. Uncle Al didn't care, and grandma knew it. She knew Larry would do a more careful job, so when she saw him again she asked him to come out and look at the job Al did. She asked dad, "So what do you think?" Dad didn't want to work on it, so he said, "I think he did a good job. It looks good." "You think it looks good? I'll tell everyone you did it." Dad redid the rock garden. He's such a perfectionist that he couldn't accept people thinking that he had done such a sloppy job.

Comments

A Dad Story: Memories Lost (Jeanne)

It has been two years since my dad died. (Today is 1.22.2018. He died on 1.21.2016.) In getting rid of scraps of paper in my life (de-cluttering; I'm not yet ready for Swedish Death Cleaning!), I found an old receipt with some notes on it. "broken hand" "Dr. Dumont" "St. Joseph nuns" "Campbellton" Google brought me here: St. Joseph Hospital - http://www.rhsj.org/en/former-apostolic-sites_382_-21.php Religieuses Hospitalieres de Saint-Joseph I can't find information on Dr. Dumont (not that I tried that hard . . . ) but here's what I remember of that conversation with my dad over two years ago (I don't have the best memory!). He was talking about bequests after my mom died. He wanted to send money to places that were meaningful to him - the convent where his sister, Sister Beatrice, served, for example. He also mentioned Dr. Dumont, who had fixed his "broken hand" when he was a kid. He said they couldn'...

Fifteen Minutes of Fame (Louise)

From Louise: In Corpus Crispy (aka Corpus Christi), I was with Eileen and Larry. It was a cloudy day and we had taken chairs down to the pier in their swimsuits with reading material looking for sun anyway. When I saw a TV news van pulling up, I said, "Oh no! This can't be good." It was the afternoon weather report. They wanted to get a shot of the curve of the coastline, showing the weather. They featured us! Frozen Minnesotans."Where are you from?" and all that. When they were done with the spot, we asked about a good place to eat cheap seafood. A local place. So we ate at the place they recommended. When we were checking out, the waitress asked how we heard about them. And we said, "Well the news guy on channel whatever it was . . . " And she said, "Oh! That was you! I saw that!" So we were famous.

Another Song Memory (Jeanne)

It's weird for me to think that my perception of childhood was that we weren't very musical . . . and yet I keep having memories of songs from my childhood! Yesterday the song "It's Me, Oh Lord" came to mind and I started singing it. What a blast from the 70s! I know we sang it as part of the worship music at St. Joan of Arc Church, but I also wish I could have a conversation with my parents about the words. It definitely stems from Matthew 7:3-5 about taking the log from your own eye before trying to remove the splinter from someone else's. (Actually, I say "definitely" because that's my own perspective. Perhaps I'm way off!) Anyhow, I can absolutely say that I need prayer. Every day, every hour of the day. We sang this song a lot - mostly at church, but at other times, too. It's a good reminder that I am in need of prayer. I need God's grace, love, and mercy. I wonder what my parents thought about this song. Here's a link ...

Eileen and Larry Somers

Search This Blog