Happy early Valentine’s Day and Happy Galentine’s Day! In the past couple of days, I’ve had a couple of people tell me that they don’t care for Valentine’s Day all that much. Either it bums them out because they are single or they resent the holiday for being invented and perpetuated by the greeting card companies to sell treats. To that, I offer an alternative. On February 14, instead of celebrating Valentine’s Day, I urge you to celebrate Phil McKinney Appreciation Day. Phil McKinney is my dad. His birthday is February 14. He died in September 2017, but that is not the most relevant part of him. The most relevant part of him is that he never, ever let a person get away from him without them knowing exactly how much he appreciated them. He never, ever spent a day without making someone smile. For me, he told me how much he loved me and how much he appreciated me all the time. Getting off the phone was at least a 15 minute dance. We’d say, “I love you” then talk about something else for a few minutes. Then we’d say, “I love you” again, then talk about another thing - so the cycle continued. I would get calls and voicemails from him telling me he was just thinking about me and wanted to say hello. It wasn’t even important that I answered. Sometimes I’m glad I missed the calls because now I have a collection of recordings of him telling me how proud he was of me and just how much he loved me. For strangers, he walked away from interactions after making them laugh or making a genuine connection with them. I will never forget how he made the person at the State Fair of Texas, whose job it was to sell storm windows, crack up with a quick bit. He stood between the storm windows, and when the heat lamp activated - the one meant to show how thick the storm windows were - Daddy shook back and forth like he was being electrocuted. After a beat, the guy tasked with selling the windows bent over laughing. He remained genuinely curious and never stopped learning. Once he got access to the internet, he perused articles on whatever topic struck his curiosity. “I read the whole Wikipedia article about sharks,” he once told me. With each technological innovation, he was awestruck and grateful. When we would FaceTime, he would marvel at the ingenuity. “This is just like Star Trek.” So all this weekend through Monday, if you feel like you’re alone or like you hate Valentine’s Day, that’s ok. It’s not just Valentine’s Day. The real holiday - the one I celebrate instead - is Phil McKinney Appreciation Day. If other people celebrate Valentine’s Day with red, heart-shaped candy boxes and bouquets of flowers, I challenge you to celebrate Phil McKinney Appreciation Day how Phil McKinney lived — Tell everyone you love that you love them. Tell everyone that you’re proud of that you’re proud of them. Make someone laugh. It can be a quick joke to a grocery store clerk, a fun inside joke shared with your co-worker, a silly game with your partner or your kid. Doesn’t matter - it just needs to be joyful, funny, and done with generosity. Remain curious and eager to learn. Read a whole Wikipedia article on a topic you’ve always wondered about. Take a second to be grateful for the tiny super computer you carry with you in your pocket each day. Additionally, in honor of this weekend’s great holiday, I offer you the piece below I wrote not so long after he left this earthy realm. It’s called “Counting the Days It Rains.” It has to do with missing him and football and celebrating him in tiny ways, all of which seem relevant given that it’s both Super Bowl Weekend and also his birthday. So this week, I bid you a Happy Phil McKinney Appreciation Day. I love you. I am proud of you. I hope you make somebody - even just one single person - smile however you can. And go learn something new about sharks. xoxo, heather *** Counting the Days It Rains You can never miss someone all at once. Maybe that's better so we don't die of broken hearts. I miss my dad in subtle, simple ways that come on suddenly and rush around me like a north wind and hit me in my bones. I miss him with something simple like the smell of gasoline on my hands after filling my car up. When I was a kid, I'd take any chance I could get to go with him anywhere – to the gas station, to the auto store. Rubber car floor mats and 10W40 oil and gasoline smells remind me of being waist-high in an auto parts store, overwhelmed by the aisles of foreign objects, containers of fluids, and car tires. The pressure gauges were my favorite. I loved sliding the plastic indicator in and out like a slide whistle. Fall weather and rain remind me of him. He kept a huge calendar on the cork board in the kitchen where he tracked when it rained. He would write “RAINED TODAY” in the little white squares on the month's page. “RAN SPRINKLERS” on others, to track the amount of moisture on the grass. Football season makes me miss him. Although, I believe when we truly love someone, any word can be related to them in a linked chain of thoughts. In improv, they call it A-to-C thinking – “A makes me think of B, which makes me think of C.” It is supposed to help you get to a more creative idea. But when we miss someone, it’s a cruel trick that lets your brain jump from garage door to dad. Some memories are a direct route, though. Football is one of those.
Daddy would watch any football game, old or new, but he particularly loved the Dallas Cowboys. He and I would talk about games on the phone the day after they happened. I should rephrase that so as not to overstate my football knowledge. He would talk; I would listen. He omitted any jargon and told me about plays in plain terms. I did the same with the law. He was interested in the legal system, always desperately wanting to be chosen for a jury. Complex cases fascinated him. I loved explaining legal issues of procedure or jurisdiction to him. Much like my explanations didn't make him a lawyer, his explanations never made me a football expert. He particularly loved cold fronts and weather changes, even when they blew leaves into the garage. So when I woke up this morning and a cold front had blown through, it made me miss him again. To help with that, I turned on a Dallas Cowboys podcast. I had no clue what I was hearing. Maybe the more I listen, the more I'll learn. Maybe I need to make flashcards. Cars are another thing that make me think of him. When I left work on my first day back from bereavement leave, I scraped my car on a pole. My first instinct was to grab my phone and call him. But I couldn't. So instead, I called mom, then my brother-in-law. But those calls didn't help, so I wept the whole drive home. In the garage, I pulled myself together and reminded myself that my parents didn't raise a helpless damsel in distress. They raised me. So I mashed the Google button on my phone and said desperately into the microphone, “I scratched my car. What do I do?” The pleasant AI voice reading from the first page of search results said, “Most scratches can be removed with whitening toothpaste.” I grabbed a roll of paper towels and some Windex to clean the spot. The scratch was huge. My car had basically hugged a concrete pillar as big around as a tree trunk. I went inside and brought back a tube of Crest Whitening with Scope + Cavity Protection. I was not sure whether the cavity protection would help, but I thought for sure it couldn't hurt. Using a soft cloth, I went to work. There, on the concrete floor of the garage, in my dress pants and blouse and leather work shoes, I slathered my car in toothpaste. With both hands, I rubbed in vigorous circles over and over. The white streaks on my car’s blue paint started to fade. The scratches lightened then disappeared. Little by little, the door panel returned to its smooth surface. It smelled minty fresh and would no longer be susceptible to cavities, tartar, or plaque. The heat from the engine and the humidity from the open garage door had sweat pouring down my face and back. But I worked through it, determined not to be incapacitated by my grief. I couldn't bring my dad back by rubbing toothpaste into my car door, but I could ensure he did his job before leaving. He and my mom raised a woman capable of helping herself with a little muscle and sweat, a Google search and the last half of a tube of Crest. That's how I'll remember him. With every problem I fix myself, every cold front blowing through, every football game and Valentine’s Day, and by counting the days that it rains. *** Thanks for subscribing! If you loved it, please consider sharing it with others. If you hated it, there’s a way to unsubscribe. I don't know how but go for it. I won’t blame you. Don’t forget to listen to Sinisterhood, check out our shop, and support us on Patreon. Learn more about me and read the full SMHT archive here.
If you liked this post from Heather vs. the World, why not share it? © 2022 Heather McKinney Unsubscribe
|
Happy Phil McKinney Appreciation Day
04:00
0
