I roll out of bed. I stumble into the kitchen.
The forecast predicts another warm July day, and as a ten year old girl living
in the country miles from any kids my age, other than my sister, I expect this
day will be as dull as the rest of the summer days.
The
morning sun shines through the window, and I’m surprised to see Dad at the
kitchen table, still eating his breakfast. The smell of his oatmeal mixes with
the aroma of his toast, done too dark for me. My sister Pat is at the other end
of the table. From the sound of her metal spoon against the sides of the
Corelle Ware bowl, I guess that she is almost done eating her Lucky Charms.
From
behind Dad’s back, I point to him, the unasked question on my face. Why isn’t
Dad at work? Pat, two and a half years my senior, just grins in reply, her
mouth full. A trace of milk dribbles down her chin.
Dad’s
attire gives no clue. Every day since I could remember, no matter what was on
the schedule, he was dressed in Dickies work shirt and pants, color Lincoln
green. The only other thing in his closet was the black suit he wore to church
on Sunday.
I rarely saw
him in the mornings as he was gone to work at the paper mill in town before I
crawled out of bed, whether I had to get ready for school or not. Once a year
he took a week off so we could go on a family vacation. Any other leave he
spent working around the house.
“Your
dad took the day off,” Mom announces as she streams through the kitchen. “But I
have to go to work, so the three of you better behave while I’m gone.”
Before the car is out of
the driveway, my sister and I stand on either side of Dad’s chair.
“Does
this mean what we think it means?” Pat finally asks.
“Yep,”
Dad answers, running a hand through his greying hair. He never was one to use
many words. “So go get dressed.”
Within
minutes, Pat and I are back in the kitchen, in our t-shirts and shorts. I’ve
even forgotten about my breakfast. We hear Dad struggling up the basement stairs
with the ten-gallon crock, but are too excited to come to his aid.
We
make a mess of the kitchen that day, as we do for one day every summer
throughout my childhood. Sugar is spilled on the floor. Root beer extract
stains the counter top. We clean up as best we can as we go along. We don’t
want to incur Mom’s wrath.
With
the metal antique bottle capper, a crazy contraption two feet high, Dad forces
the caps onto the soda pop bottles, locking the metal caps into place. Over the
years, Dad learned to move the production outside at this point. One or two of
the glass bottles always break during the process.
Over
the next few weeks, as the filled bottles lay on their sides on an old quilt
under our beds, several more bottles will explode from the pressure as the soda
begins to effervesce. In the same manner, Mom will explode. Dad will just
shrug, because he knows, as my sister and I know, that in the end it will be
worth it for a bottle of homemade Root Beer.
This is Dad in 1977 while we were on our vacation to the Grand Canyon. I'm still trying to find pictures of him in his Lincoln green Dickies. I wrote this piece while at the Green Lake Christian Writers Conference last week. I have wanted to write this story for a long time and I'm glad I had the chance to have it critiqued by an expert.
When I was five years old, my parents bought a camper for their pickup
truck. Every summer after that, my parents and the dog would load into the
truck, and my sister and I would pile into the camper and we would travel
somewhere across the country. We visited Yellowstone, the Black Hills, Grand
Canyon, Texas, Virginia, Niagara Falls and nearly every place in between. Lying
on the bed above the cab of the truck, looking out our own picture window as
our parents drove down the road, my sister and I witnessed all the beauty which
God has given us in the land we live in.
Yet I am writing you a new
command; its truth is seen in him and in you, because the darkness is passing
and the true light is already shining. 1 John 2:8 
