So I know I talk about my mom frequently on here, but I feel like I rarely mention my dad. I figured now would be a great time to introduce him to all of my fabulous readers considering an incident occurred with him today that paints a perfect picture of who he is as a person. Before you read this little story, there’s a few things that you should know about my dad…He’s a quiet man who rarely shows any type of emotion. Despite his stoic facade, his love for his family is so evident. This afternoon I was outside reading on the deck, which is so gorgeous because my pops has planted countless flowers, vegetables, and other plants in pots on the deck or in the soil surrounding it. While I was reading, my dad came out to water all of his plant children because it’s been super dry in my neck of the woods this past week. After he was done watering his plants, he sat down on the stairs of our deck that overlook our spacious backyard. Something told me that I really needed to sit down beside him and talk – or if anything just enjoy the beauty of all of the plants that he brought life to. I’m not gonna lie – I’m in a mood today. I had a not so ideal time on a date yesterday, and I’m SO hungry (which you guys know all about if you read my last post “Monday Update: Mehhh Edition”). Because of my lack of eating, I’ve been having dizzy spells and a pounding headache all day, so it felt so good to just sit down and rest my head on my dad’s shoulder. Usually with my dad I have to initiate the conversation to get him talking, but he said the first word which was kind of shocking. After my dad nonchalantly brought up his pure hatred for our neighbors, who we’ve had an ongoing feud with since we moved into my neighborhood, we discussed this further for a solid fifteen minutes. (Our neighbors despise us enough that they planted a line of evergreen trees on our property line to block their view of our home.) My dad then proceeded to tell me this story about how him and the patriarch of the household were talking shit to each other and my dad straight up told the guy “you’ll be dead before the trees are big enough to block your view”. Hahahaha! I’ve never heard this story before and it was SO funny to me. After we had our ice breaker conversation of thoroughly putting down our neighbors, I told him that my hang out with this one guy didn’t go so hot yesterday. I felt like it would be better to discuss this with my dad, who doesn’t have an emotional bone in his body as opposed to my mom who would drown me with a million questions about the day. I’m glad I followed my instinct to tell my dad, because he literally said one thing about my confession and it was “You should really join farmersonly.com”. He then told me to get up so I could test out the hammock that he put out over the weekend. Baffled by his last ridiculous comment about me finding a nice “country boy” on a dating site for “good ol’ country folk” (as their commercial boasts), what else could I do? I got up and followed him to the hammock which he helped me on so my clumsy self wouldn’t fall off. Once I was on, I laid down and my dad pushed the hammock back and forth and let me be a whiny twenty year old girl until I felt like going inside. I’m so glad that I had my sunglasses on so he wouldn’t see me crying, but I just couldn’t help it – that’s how much that moment with my dad meant to me.

There was something so incredible to me about this exchange that I had with my dad. I really can’t recall the last time that I had a real “father/daughter” moment with him and I was so surprised that I didn’t have to prompt him to show me affection. Seriously as soon as I mentioned my not so good day yesterday it was like something clicked inside of him. I could feel him wanting to give me a special experience after a not so good one – and thanks to my dad, I immediately felt better. I know my dad doesn’t read my blog, but if he just happens to stumble upon this post – then this is me telling him that I love him so much and that I’ll never ever forget our afternoon together on the deck…And yes, I’m absolutely crying as I type this. ❤

^^^ I feel like I post this video a lot, but it’s my favorite song in the world so I don’t care. My dad was the one who introduced me to U2 when I was a little girl and they remain my favorite band to this day. “Beautiful Day” truly emanates pure joy and with a few simple but powerful gestures my dad got me feeling happy again – so this ones for you dad. Thank you.

I hope all of you are having a terrific Memorial Day! Fair warning, my summer classes start tomorrow so you probably won’t be hearing from me. But as always, you know how to get a hold of me through my comment section or via email! Questions? Concerns? I wanna hear from all of you, so leave me a comment and let’s chat! Much love. -Sarah