For Dad, with love.

Once upon a time, many years ago, I was little, maybe 5 or 6 years old.. Back then time went by slower and life was simpler. Christmas Eve was THE day of the year. What kid doesn’t love the day when they receive a bunch of presents and looked forward ONLY to the toys?? I was that little girl. I had my list to “Santa.” Most of my requests at that time had something to do with Barbies. I loved them and having more and more sets and accessories for them was the best you could get for Christmas. At the time opening the present and immediately playing with it was THE goal of the night. At the time I never thought about how much time it took to set it up and put it together. Maybe there really were more instructions then what came with my mom’s new vacuum, but I was more worried about my blonde Barbie (at one time I probably had a name for her maybe Dacia or Allison, but I do remember she came with paint to decorate her own “cowboy” clothes) sleeping in her new bed in her new house. I remember that my older sister’s present was a Barbie Camper and my two little brothers each got a remote control car. All toys obviously weren’t set up and “ready to go” right from the box. The cars needed the stickers and batteries put in them, the camper needed to be put together and have stickers put on them too, and my Barbie Folding Fun House needed the most time. It had a LOT of pieces in the box and needed to be put together before it would fold up. My mom helped with the sticker for the boys, Dad put the batteries in and got to work on the Barbie stuff. Yes, on Christmas Eve, it was probably 11pm way past any little kid’s bedtime. I’m sure it wasn’t easy, but my dad sat down and put it all together for me. I played with it that night and for a long time afterwards.


Later in life, when I was 16 years old I got my first car. It was a gift from a cousin and I loved it. My beautiful 1995 Lincoln Continental was my prize gift that year. My dad and mom had to drive to Minneapolis to pick it up for me. They also had to do all that title stuff to put the car in my name and set up the insurance for it. They brought it home the same night that I was leaving for Montana with my aunt Karen and my grandma. That was my first Christmas that I didn’t spend with my parents. In fact, it is the only Christmas that I haven’t spent with my parents. This Christmas will be the second and I have a feeling it will be very hard for me, but that’s another story. My dad drove my Lincoln home and I just home from a basketball game, I think. It really is funny how hard it is to remember things from not so many years ago. I had all my stuff packed and we had my aunt’s truck packed for the long drive to Montana. Before I could go though I had to at least take my new car for a spin! It was snowing and I took the car to the end of the road and back. At that time my car didn’t really have any problems, but later the transmission died. Of course my dad took it in to get it fixed and also to get a new windshield for it because it had a crack in it when I got it. He fixed that car for me and I ran it until I couldn’t anymore. Of course when I crashed it in January 2007, there really wasn’t much I could do to fix it, but I drove it with the thing still and now it sits in our yard, covered by weeds in the summer, leaves in the fall, and snow in the winter. After that I had already semi moved to Chile and only needed a car when I was in Minnesota. Last year when I went to the US with Rodrigo, my dad and uncle fixed up a “work car” for me. This work car really wasn’t for work. My uncle used it to drive a quarter mile each day to the Kasella Concrete yard. It had a layer of dirt inside because that quarter mile happened to be a dirt road. I cleaned that red beast up and Ro and I drove it for the summer. Of course we had problems with it. One time it just decided to stop on 15 in St. Cloud in the middle of rush hour. Of course rush hour in St. Cloud really isn’t too bad compared to other places I have been, but there we were in the middle of the summer on a day that was hotter than hell and super humid. Dad came and tried to start the beast, but it just didn’t feel like starting. He called triple A and had it towed to a garage to be looked at. They couldn’t find anything wrong with it. From then on it started when it felt like it and sometimes not at all, but I still drove it. When it started getting cold, and Ro was already gone back to Chile, my dad fixed his “work car” for me. This car had been sitting in the yard with the Lincoln for some time, but he got it running for me, fixed the starter and put in a new battery for me. This car at least had heat. Of course it wasn’t beautiful and I did get laughed at by some guy driving a brand new Mustang at a gas station once, but I didn’t care. It got me from point A to point B. Most of the time.

These days, my dad really can’t do that much for me since I am a billion miles away. But when I go home, he takes me fishing and usually I don’t even have to put bait on the hook and I never have to take the fish off the hook, unless they are sunnies or something small. When Ro was in MN with me, he took us fishing, Ro caught an eel pout. Eel pouts are very ugly fish covered in a very smelly slime and usually they are only caught in the wintertime, but Ro caught one in the summer because he wanted to be cool. Of course Ro had no idea at the time what he was catching and I am sure even today he would have a hard time telling the difference between any kind of fish, but I think he knows what an eel pout is now. Anyways, Ro was reeling in the fish and Dad caught a glimpse of it. “Son of a bitch!” was what my dad said. Of course Ro started to feel nervous and thought he did something wrong, but it wasn’t his fault he caught that ugly thing. Dad netted it and brought it into the boat and of course Ro had to have a picture with it. I had never seen and eel pout caught in the summer time, neither had my dad. So dad got his pliers and picked the fish up with the pliers and handed it to Ro and took a picture. Dad also drove us to Canada that day on the boat, just over the border quick and back. In the winter, we went back up to that same lake to ice fish over New Years. Ro was back in Chile, but my mom and I, Shannon, Shannon and my aunt Judy were all in a fish house drinking something good talking and fishing. Yes, 3 Shannons in one fish house. We did even though we didn’t do it on purpose manage to as my uncle says, “get things all bunched up nicely.” We caught a fish. Yes, WE, meaning 3 of us, caught the same fish at the same time. Obviously we weren’t paying too much attention to our lines at the time because my mom caught the fish in the mouth and the fish proceeded to struggle and swim around and get snagged up on my line and my aunt’s line. Of course we called Dad, who was in a different fish house, to come and help with this mess. After everything was untangled and we were went back to fishing Dad went back to his house, but came back whenever we screwed something up.

 This is Ro with the eel pout, the picture doesn't do it justice though, they are much more disgusting in person.


So, today, I would like to wish Dad, one day early, Happy Birthday! Thank you for all you have done for me, and mostly thank you for helping to make me the person I am today. I love you and I miss you! Have a great birthday.

This is Dad and little bro Carl, it was Carl's birthday yesterday!

This is the only picture I have with my dad. But you can see he's waiting for me to turn around so he can take a pic too and text message it to my mom. :)