Just as an observation, there is a spot for radio personality in the Valley Advocate Best of the Valley poll, and one Ella Childs is a radio personality.  Feel free to vote and to encourage your friends to vote.

My full column about our ballot for the Fids & Kamily Awards is over at Valley Kids (page 26).  But I thought I’d put the list here too.  It tracks the eligibility dates for Fids & Kamily, so, for example, Frances England’s Mind of My Own will be eligible next year.

1 (tie). Elizabeth Mitchell – Sunny Day

1 (tie).  Justin Roberts – Jungle Gym

1 (tie).  Various Artists – Many Hands: Family Music for Haiti (note: I have made back what I put into this record, so the F&K organizers all agreed that it was okay for me to vote for it)

4.  Rani Arbo & daisy mayhem – Ranky Tanky

5.  Dean Jones (with the Felice Bros.) – Rock Paper Scissors

6-10 (all tied for 6th):

Deedle Deedle Dees – American History + Rock ‘n’ Roll = Deedle Deedle Dees

The Not-Its! – Time Out to Rock

Secret Agent 23 Skidoo – Underground Playground

Uncle Rock – The Big Picture

Recess Monkey – Final Funktier

(Posted in January 2014; previously this appeared only on Facebook, it seems.)

On Father’s Day last year, I was, if memory serves, the first one up and over to my parents’ house. My dad was in the living room in the hospital bed we’d had brought in, and he was awake and alert.

I gave him a hug and said, “Happy Father’s Day.” He laughed a little, recognizing the slight oddity in wishing him a happy day when he had at most a few days to live, but said, in his weak but clear whisper, “It’s been great.”

I’m sure I talked to him more that day, at least to help with logistics, comfort, and so on, but that’s mostly what I think about as my last real interaction with him. He died that night, in much the same way he lived: with grace, courage, and strength.

For the past few months, I’ve been dreading Father’s Day because that was the day that he died (it fell on June 21 last year). Well, “dreading” isn’t quite the right word, but I’ve been at least assuming it would be a particularly tough day. And I suppose it has been, in that it still hurts to think about that three-week period from his diagnosis with pancreatic cancer through his death, and its anniversary has brought those thoughts to the fore.

It’s been an interesting morning so far, though, somewhat defying expectations. Ella is camping with her Girl Scout troop, returning in a couple of hours, and Dena got up ridiculously early to get to a triathlon. So it’s just me and Liam.

I stumbled out of bed, hearing a bunch of noise from the kitchen, and he was in there (at 5:45 or so), getting breakfast in bed together for me. “Happy Father’s Day, Dad,” he said, along with a hug. Unconsciously, I echoed my dad: “It’s been great.”

(An aside: Dena had given him instructions not to bring my breakfast in until 6:00 – figuring I wouldn’t want to be awakened before then – so he waited until 6:00 on the nose to bring it in, even though he knew I was awake. Alas, he had poured the milk in the cereal around 5:45, so it was just a tad soggy. But the toast and lemon curd were delicious.)

After breakfast, we went for a bike ride, looked at the sleeping ducks at Look Park, watched the Mill River flow by, talked about strategies for getting up the steep hills in cyclocross, set world records on the swings, and just…were.

More than I would have predicted, today – and the days leading up to it – have been more about my dad’s life than his death. Just as one example, we talked at dinner last night about the science fair projects I did every year with him, and my photo browsing has been a lot more focused on looking back at his 72 years rather than his last three weeks. What’s more, those conversations haven’t been like picking at a scab – we’re increasingly able to stay on the sweet side of the bitter/sweet continuum.

It’s all tinged with sadness, of course, but I’m getting more able to think about the simple truth of what I think of as his last statement to me – “It’s been great” – and, maybe even better, about my time as a father, and the time yet to come.

Indeed, it has been, and will be, great.

Other relevant posts:

• Chalkboards (2009-05-29)
• W. Ves. Childs (2009-06-24)
• More Light (2009-12-22)
• Science and Solstices (2012-06-21)
• Notes (2013-12-02)

Yup, I got quoted in the New York Times.  (In case you’re curious, this is the third time; both other times have been in my capacity as a law professor.)

First, if you’re looking for information about KindieFest, head here now (click on “Festival” up top to find out about the public Sunday event).

If you are here for the first time, a little tour for you.  If you visit our page at WRSI.com, you can listen to recent shows on demand.  You can also listen live online via WRSI.com.  Up across the top there, you can read a little more about us, see old playlists, listen to some in-studio performances, watch in-studios and other live music, see some of my picks for the best family music of the last few years, see what books Ella has talked about, or learn more about our forthcoming CD to benefit Haiti relief, featuring new music from an amazing lineup, including They Might Be Giants, Pete Seeger, Elizabeth Mitchell, and many more.

And then along the right-hand column, we’ve got lots more, including upcoming events in the Pioneer Valley, links to a bunch of other family music sites like Zooglobble, Out with the Kids, and Gooney Bird Kids.

So: take a look around, listen to the show, and enjoy!

Monte, who does the morning show and is Program Director on WRSI, is starting his Campout for Cancer Connection this morning.  He’ll be camping out on the courthouse lawn in downtown Northampton until he raises $20,000.  Also, he hates camping.

Cancer Connection does amazing work supporting people with cancer — and their families — and I wish we’d had it in Fayetteville last summer when my dad was diagnosed and dying.  While we got great services from the local hospice folks, Cancer Connection goes well beyond that.  To learn more about the group, visit their website.

We’ve donated in past years, but since last summer, it’s become even more personally important to us.  Ella and Liam each kicked in $10 this year, and we donated on top of that.

You should too.  Go to WRSI.com and click on “Donate Now.” (And you can click on “Listen Live” to hear the broadcast.)

My dad died six months ago yesterday.  It is convenient, I guess, that he died on the summer solstice (also Father’s Day this year).  It’s easy to remember and easy to mark the anniversaries.

I’ve never been particularly focused on particular dates – Dena and I have spent anniversaries and birthdays apart and we have managed to survive – but this winter solstice seemed likely to be important, which is part of why we’re in Arkansas for it.

Every single day since he died there has been literally been less light in our half of the world.  (Note, incidentally, that I used the term “literally” correctly.)  And for most of those days, there has been figuratively less light as well for me and I think for our family; the pain has been right below the surface, far more so than I expected.

But from yesterday through the one-year anniversary of his death, there will be, at least, more literal light.

– –

We’re planning to go get a Christmas tree tomorrow for my mom’s house.  (She and my sister’s family kindly waited until we were here so we could all go and could all decorate it together.)  We’ll set it up in the living room, probably ten feet from where he died.

So tonight I rolled out the big wooden box that my dad built to hold the Christmas paraphernalia.  This box, like many of his projects, went through multiple iterations until it hit the size and shape he wanted to hold it all.  It fits neatly under his workbench, rolls smoothly into the house, and was manageable with his ataxia.

It has been a few years since we spent Christmas anywhere other than in our own home.  We concluded that the hassle of travel and the desire to start our own rituals and traditions counseled in favor of staying at home and doing our visits other times of the year.  So I actually didn’t think that the holiday part of the visit was going to be much tougher than being here last month for the burial of his ashes (which, while not all giggles and kittens, was not terrible).

It wasn’t until I started getting the boxes of lights, decorations, and other stuff out that I started to get the reason people talk about the holidays being particularly tough in the grief process.  It turns out that, for me, it’s not about recent holidays, but about all of our Christmases. 

As I type this, I’m sitting at the dining room table with a couple of the boxes next to me.  One of them dates to when we lived in Oklahoma (25-plus years ago); it’s a Burpee Seed Co. box addressed to our home in Bartlesville.  It has contained, according to my dad’s distinctive print, “Mugs, bows, cookies”; “Tree Stuff, Angel,” “Balls,” “Star,” and, in the most recent version, “Tree Stuff, Remote Switch.”

Unpacking those boxes every winter was something I don’t think I realized at the time was important. I loved to put undeniably excessive quantities of icicles on the tree.  I loved that we had exactly one Christmas tree light that blinked.  I loved that our parents saved every single ornament we made, even the round piece of Styrofoam with scribbled crayon marks from when we were toddlers.

Nobody made a point of labeling what we were doing as a family tradition.  Nobody explicitly pointed out, “Look, we saved all these things because we love you.”  I’m not sure how conscious they were of the importance of what we were doing.  But that’s what it was about and what it is still about. 

That aching place where the traditions were is part of what makes it hard.  But I think it’s also what will make the additional literal light over the next six months be accompanied by additional figurative light as well.  I hope.