Happy Birthday Gramps!

I have spent a while this morning contemplating the perfect anecdote to sum up my dad. I could tell you about the time that he got me a Jesus candle for my birthday (none of us are catholic), and then laughed himself to tears over the joke, which no one else quite got. I could tell you that he has a hat, purchased at a thrift store, that has a name tag pinned to it that says, "Michael", and that he has never removed the name tag, even though his name is Bob. I think that the best, most Gramps-summing-up story I could tell, though, is this one: when I gave birth to Max, six weeks early, it was scary and sad and overwhelming. Everyone rallied around us, everyone wanted to help, but mostly we just had to watch Max grow into his body enough to be ready to come home. While we were doing that, my dad cleaned, organized, and sterilized our entire house. He put oil in our car and checked the tires and installed the car seat. He cooked food and insisted that we sit down and eat it. He allowed us to worry about nothing but Max, which was good, because that was pretty much a full time job. He is zany, and eccentric, and his fashion sense is often a step or two beyond the rest of us. Mostly, though, he takes care of us, in thousands of small but significant ways, and Ian, Max, Maggie and I are all so very lucky that he is ours. Happy Birthday, Pops!