He’s much more than that

So, as you might imagine, my Dad has been pretty much in the forefront of my thoughts. Pretty much constantly, as denial doesn’t seem to be working its old black magic like it used to. I’ve found denial to be quite handy over my lifetime and am somewhat miffed that it isn’t performing up to par lately.

When I was a kid (and yes, we DID have dinosaurs back then!) cancer was pretty much the end of the line. I remember a big drive to find a cure; I don’t remember huge distinctions between different cancers, they all seemed to be lumped together in one big sickness C.A.N.C.E.R. Obviously, things have changed from when I was a kid; I mean we have cars and we don’t live in caves and all that, but it is hard to get away from thinking of cancer as a looming DeathEater (that’s a Harry Potter reference). Funny, but when I see Papa, when he comes over to my sister’s house to visit, he is simply “Papa” (to the grandkids) or “Dad” and cancer is only a very teeny tiny piece of his self. My folks have too many grandparent names. One of my brothers (I can’t make this easy; I have 5 siblings) had the first grandchild and honestly, I don’t remember if he had a special name for my folks. I think it was Grandma and Grandpa. Then my sister in Illinois had a grandchild by the time she had her fourth (all boys!) my folks were known as Papa and Clip-Clop. I think my eldest was the next born (there were actually 3 grandchildren born within 28 days at that point in time; you can imagine how torn my folks must have been) and he gave my mom the name “Tata”. So my poor mom, whenever she addresses a grandchild in the 3rd person will go through a list of names to refer to herself. Dad, for some reason, has always remained “Papa” (though I believe he started out with “Grandpa”). Now where was I headed before I got stuck out in the boonies on this particular tangent?

I started writing a post last night in my head and tried to stop it because I knew I’d forget everything by morning. My mind is a complete blank right now so I’ll just end here and see if coffee might add some missing brain cells. Thank you to all the ad clickers; because of you, we earned THIRTY FIVE CENTS yesterday! (me thinks George would get a chuckle.