In preparation of my daughter’s thirty-third birthday, I went into the “Dad Drawer.”
The Dad Drawer, as I understand it, is common among most men of my acquaintance. In it, you will find many of the hidden (and for good reason) dregs and vestiges which define a man. The first Dad Drawer I remember belonged to my own father. It was the top drawer of a chest of drawers in my parents’ bedroom. There was no organization in that drawer, except in my father’s mind. What I recall most was finding several chanter reeds (for the bagpipes he almost never owned) and a pair of cat skulls.
Yes, cat skulls.
As I understand it, back in the day, when it came time to learn disection, cats were used instead of frogs, or even lesser creatures. Somehow, Dad managed to score a pair of cat’s skulls from a disection class. They complemented the plastic human skull kept on top of the chest of drawers for just about ever.
Anyway, one of the people in my EFM class sent me an email stating that she was headed over to Savannah Georgia and wondered if I wanted to send something to her.
Initially, I was going to send her the cans of cat food we had left when our cat (Morticia – High Priestess of the Underworld) decided to slither out the front door and didn’t come back.
Too impractical.
I finally hit upon sending her a commemorative ball cap. No big deal for me as I could never wear those “One size fits all” caps due to an outsized head. There was also a button I wanted to send her commemorating the same event. The button was in my Dad Drawer. In finding that button, I spent an hour doing a semi-serious inventory of the dregs and vestigas I had collected over the course of, well, shall we say, several years.
There were pictures. Lots of pictures, ranging from my high school portrait for the yearbook, through my oil patch days, and continuing through a portion of my first marriage. I found several pictures of my daughter (including the enclosed shot where she has me by my hair) at a very young age, as well as a photo or two of my son. The kids’ pictures include at least one set of each child when they were in elementary school.
I had a small collection of buttons of all sorts, including a button of Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau promoting the Return of the Pink Panther; several buttons made as souveniers for a couple of Episcopal Cursillos I attended thirty or so years ago, a button advertising a radio station in Columbus; several buttons from the days I worked for Sears (reminding customers to use their Sears credit cards; and at least one button declaring that I am not understood.
Two funeral notices were included in the mess, as well as a birth announcement of the son of a man I worked with back in the oil field days. The baby would be closing in on his 40th birthday… turned 37 last month. Another envelope contained a letter written to me by my paternal grandfather when he lived here in the DFW Metromess over sixty years ago. I noted that my Dad Drawer was in a chest of drawers my paternal grandfather purchased when he lived here, with stops in Virginia and Ohio before coming back here to Texas to roost.
There was artwork done by both of my children. A pencil box. Several old pairs of glasses. A salesman’s notebook like I used to carry. A photocopy of a magazine article about a car first made up the street from a place I used to live. A golf ball or two. Wires and electrical adaptors for electrical gadgets long gone from my life (hey, they may come in handy someday). And there were more than an ample number of mementoes from a lifetime of accumulation of life’s little treasures.
I found a few things which would properly entertain and amaze my daughter when the hat arrives in Savannah this weekend or early next week. Hopefully she will be amazed at the selection and perhaps decided to start a drawer filled with mementoes of her own.
Happy Birthday, Sarah. Here’s to many more with the memories which go along with them.
Be Seeing You!
bdharrellauthor 