My Dad....searching for pirates.

 ( Sooke, B.C.)

 Just re-found some of the photos of my dad and I, a few gazillion in the folder, so chose a few for the blog. He died, about a year after this picture, in 1968 after years of battling throat cancer.  He smoked like a chimney. One of my earliest memories was rolling cigarettes for him.I thought it was a lot of fun, stuffing the papers with tobacco. He would get the papers and loose tobacco from the tobacconist on Government Street, Victoria. That shop is still there.  If he were still here he would be about  115 years old, he was 8 years older than my mother. He died at the end of March,  and my mother died, on the exact same day, 20 years later, in 1988, 4 months before I was married.  But the time has not been sad.

 He died before I could tell him things. But maybe I didn't have to tell him anything. He would know. He always knew. He could not speak, those last few years. He could look with his eyes. And his eyes told volumes. I didn't know, then, that I was adopted. I would ask him now what it was like to choose me. To know that it was such a God-thing. That there is a purpose for each life and a reason we are here, and to know that God has such a huge hand in it.  Though, back then, we didn't talk of these things. When at Sooke we looked for pirate ships on the horizon.

 He would stand for hours on the shore at Sooke. He was not well, most of the 6 years I knew him.  It would be years before I would find the old photos( only a couple of years ago) of him and my mother, in the days when they were footloose and fancy free. The photos would tell of good times and bad , and more good than bad.

"Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged,for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go." (Joshua 1:9)

(Government Street, Victoria, around 1950)

My mom was always  the anxious one, always worried.  My dad was the calm one. He beleived in pirates, after all.... 

We had a special connection at Sooke, where the cabin was built on the edge of the ocean. This was the hollow log that was here for years and years, till it disintegrated. My dad would take me down and pretend it was the pirate ship we were always looking for. He was always looking for pirate ships. He knew he didn't have much time left. He made the most of it. With me.

He taught me to listen to the wind in the telephone poles . "If you listen really carefully" , he would say, "you can hear the pirates calling". Then we would go down to the water. I would stand on our log, and we would watch, silently , for pirates on the open ocean.

"And anyone who welcomes a little child, like this, on my behalf, is welcoming me." (Matthew 8:15)