Pickles and Paint

When we were children, we are all sort of creative.  Creative either due to actual talent or boredom but imaginative either way. Personally, I always fancied myself an inventive child.  When I was growing up my dad managed a branch of a large commercial food supplying chain and we somehow ended up with huge pickle buckets at our house.  We never actually had the pickles in them, they were just huge 50 gallon plastic pickle buckets.  They were always in the garage, for storage I suppose.  I’m not sure how this originally happened but at some point, I ended up turning them into a ghetto drum set.  I flipped them all on their tops and turned another one upside down for my seat.  I found some sort of long broken wooden handle and I would just sit out there in the garage alone and play those buckets for hours.  Not like a cute little 3 year-old playing the bucket drums, no-no.  This was serious “I think I’m talented” 7 year-old bucket playing.  I can only really remember playing two beats:

Boom Chink Boom Chink Boom Chink Chink Boom Chink

The chinking was of course me hitting the concrete floor with my broom handle stick.

Then was another tune that was a little cutting edge.

Boom Boom Boom Boom Chink Chink Chink Chink Boom Boom Boom Boom Chink Chink Chink

That one was a little different.  I imagine that’s why that song never really took off.

When I wasn’t laying the smack down on pickle containers, I can remember taking an oversized Toys R Us bag and stuffing it with cotton balls.  I sectioned it off into ears, a head, and body and painted the face, turning it into an Easter Bunny complete with cotton tail.  I probably remember this one because even as a child, you can tell if you parents are really impressed with your art or if it’s just another scribble page for the fridge.  I recall that my mom kept it and showed proudly to a lot of people.  Namely my brothers and sisters.  I actually think we still have it.

Somewhere between plastic bags and buckets I found the muse of my artistic hands.  The medium to which all other mediums are compared:  puff paint.  Being the business lady that I am, I started making and selling puff paint decorated folders with Disney characters on them to my classmates for a dollar a piece.  Being the lazy person I am, I believe I shut down my operation after three sells.  I did make one classic piece though: a shirt for my father.

My dad lived in Louisville after my parent’s divorce and Father’s Day was approaching and I needed the perfect gift.  So, I took a white Fruit of the Loom shirt and thus began the fashion of all fashions.  Being the good dad that my father is, he’s worn it every Father’s Day since then.  Somehow every year I forget that he’s going to wear it so when he walks in the room with it on, I’m always caught off guard and get choked up.

This year was no different.  Only this time, I walk into our church sanctuary and over a blue and white pin striped dress shirt was a ratty white puff paint shirt that time and storage had tinted a yellowish color.  There he was just walking around and talking to people with it on over his dress clothes.  And, of course, it made my heart beat fast because I felt like I wanted to choke up but I was trying not to.

At the beginning of the service my dad got up to pray, shirt and all.  He said, “I’m going to try to get through this.”  I knew I was a goner.  He stood before our little church and said with tears welling in his eyes, “The greatest joy in my life has been being a father…..” And so he continued.  And so I cried.  Unfortunately, ugly face cry.  I watched as my dad spoke passionately about being a father, my father.  Cara, Craig, and Christina’s father.  He raised his hand up and spoke with authority about how there is a Father who loves greater than him.  A Father who allowed him to be born on the country floor of his broken down country childhood home, delivered by an aunt.  A Father who sustained that life and saved his soul 19 years later.  Watching his hands rise with his dress shirt peering behind his “dad” t-shirt I made as a child and seeing him talk about loving his children but loving more the Father who loves all the little children, including him, was the single memory snapshot I’ll keep in my mind of exactly who my father was. 

My best friend was there to see that prayer that day.  I’m so glad that someone got to see what I admire in action.  I’m as proud as I was the day I spent hours in the basement making puff paint hearts.

Eventually the service began and ended and some people came up to me and told me how they had cried watching my dad up there on stage.  One girl I was talking to said, I already cried earlier when he explained the shirt to me and told me that this year he was going to pass it on to Lance.  I covered my heart with my hand and gasped and my eyes began to water.  He had never told me that before.  This Father’s Day will be the first year that I haven’t seen my dad wear that shirt in  18 years.  This year I will see a new father holding our baby girl with a tattered old t-shirt peeking behind pink swaddled blankets.  I don’t expect that shirt to mean to him what it means to me but the fact that he’s willing to wear it, let’s me know that there’s another a little girl that will someday be looking at her father in the very same way.  They say that, “Behind every good man is a good woman.”  I also believe behind every good woman was a father that was good to them first.    I have the puff paints to prove it.