Happy Birthday Pood

   January 13 was my dad’s birthday. Pood, the nickname his 12 brothers and sisters gave him, would have been 84 years old.

     It has been more than 17 years since he died just a few days after Father’s Day, and I miss him, but not in the way I would have predicted. It’s not his voice, his laughter or the touch of his callused hands that I mourn. What brings the tears is that he did not know his grandchildren, and they do not know him.

     E was two when my dad died. They spent many Saturdays together, picking up pecans in our front yard, E holding tightly to my dad’s thick finger. Papa, as E called him, doted on him. E barely remembers.

     Pood always wanted a daughter, but that was not meant to be. If he had known my girl, oh my. I can only imagine. He would have never left her side. Pood didn’t have much, but he would have returned to collecting and selling scrap metal to earn money to spoil her.

     My wife and I knew we were expecting when Pood woke up with a debilitating headache. Still weary from an earlier miscarriage, we had not told anyone that we were pregnant. In the ICU, hoping to help him find strength to battle back from the sudden aneurysm that had put him in a coma and on life support, I whispered in his ear that a new grandbaby was on the way.

     This news brought a thin ray of light into the dark days that followed, and when she was born seven months later, I immediately thought of my dad and how happy he would have been about this little girl. I continue to be reminded of that as A nears her 17^th birthday. Her sense of humor, her storytelling, the singing voice that does not know an audience, would have him wrapped around her finger. That is when I miss him.

     I miss him every time E picks up his guitar. My dad played the guitar and sang. He loved bluegrass and the country music classics of Flatt and Scruggs and Hank Williams. E’s first guitar was my dad’s old Yamaha. It opened a door to a love of music and a talent that I have never before witnessed.

     This Christmas, E’s gift to us was three carols performed as a SoundCloud release. It was wonderful, and I knew my dad would have smiled and bragged about it. This week, when The Belmont Tapes released a video of E playing and singing “Rough Draft,” a song he wrote, I immediately thought of Pood. My dad, E’s Papa, would have shown it to everyone, stopped strangers to have them listen and driven to Alabama to show my cousins.

     I watched the video again on January 13, and realizing that it was Papa’s birthday, I knew that there could not have been a better way to remember him and honor him on his birthday. Here’s a link to the video.
     Happy birthday, Papa. Happy birthday, Pood.