Cover Photo -5minutefreewrite (still a freewrite but way more than 5 minutes, really)

For https://steemit.com/freewrite/@mariannewest/day-716-5-minute-freewrite-sunday-prompt-cover-photo

My dad’s cover photo is the allis chalmers in front of the barn surrounded by the green of the permaculture farm in the place where I grew up.

I don’t remember which particular heartbreak it was. No wait, I do. Do I? I dunno. I was heartbroken a lot up until Stina. But I was talking to him about whatever emotional pain I was feeling, and he told me that love isn’t a feeling, it’s an action.

He spent every moment loving. He loved by baling hay and he loved by feeding animals. He loved by cooking spaghetti and he loved by watching ballet. He loved by reading aloud and he loved by building bonfires.

He loved by standing up for what was right. I’m really not sure if disagreeing with others ever bothered him. I rather think not. He knew right from wrong and understood, as Caleb said, the undercurrents. He knew WHY right and wrong were, what practical impact they had on the world. His was a morality based on truth that was, to my knowledge, free from unconscious bias. He was very conscious of who he was challenging, and he understood their positions as well as his own. I want to emphasize this: my dad was right. If you disagreed with him in any way, and are here loving him even though you disagreed, I think you should re-examine the issues on which you disagreed, and come around to his way of thinking, because he’s right. Just do it now, so you can be right, too, and already.

Are those the rose-tinted glasses of a son enamoured of his father? Nah. I’m aware that he made mistakes, very few, but a couple, but he didn’t make any mistakes when it came to anything he spent a long time thinking about. His worldview was accurate.
He was comfortable with who he was. He had a wheezing silent sort of laugh. He farted frequently. He did not necessarily derive pleasure from the humor inherent in farts. In fact, I was not raised with fart jokes. But in my adulthood, I have come to appreciate them. And he was an excellent source of funny farts. In his honor, Stina has been farting a lot, too, and I have become accustomed to farting loudly as well. I hope that, as we toast my dad today, we can all fart comfortably around each other.

He loved by eating pickled herring, and sharing that love with me. Stinky cheese, like aged brick, was a love he passed on to me as well, though not Stina or my mom. He had an advantage on all of us, having no sense of smell. Which was maybe also why cleaning out the horse barn didn’t seem like such an onerous task to assign a mere twelve-year-old boy who- I kid. We cleaned it together, my mom, my dad, and me. And lo and behold, I do look back fondly on shoveling horse manure.

He loved by listening to people, and by sitting quietly in the presence of them, or by telling stories to them. Sometimes he was loud, sometimes he was quiet, but if he was surrounded by people, he was content. I need to edit that. Or do I? I might have a less than clear perspective on that. I mean, he was certainly usually content, but he was also politically active, and argued at town meetings and other venues where officials with power were doing what was wrong in spite of having available to them the information about what was right in the living person of my dad. I imagine he was discontent in some of those moments, but maybe not. There’s a contentment that comes from standing up for what is right.

He loved pastries a lot. Where’s the action in that, huh? Eating them. He loved them by eating them.

He made oatmeal for breakfast every morning when I was a kid. Well, sometimes pancakes. He loved going to breakfast on the farm. I suspect being on farms and being a farmer reminded him of his own childhood on the farm.
When he was very young, he stuck his hand in a very large fan and had his fingers almost chopped off. They had to reattach them. I don’t know why this particular story is making me cry. I think because I have such a clear memory of examining his hands for the scars, which he pointed to as if they were as clear as day, but which I could never really make out. It’s a thing I think I would have asked to see again in the future, if he were still alive to show me, and to show Lochlan. Weird.

I know they burned down the barn, though I’m a little fuzzy on the details. Maybe Delmer or Gary or David can clear that up.

I once put the car in neutral- Man, I realize I’m just trying to record all the stories about my dad ever.

I remember being SO upset one night that I had not listened to the bedtime warning and had stayed up watching whatever video and the consequence was that I’d have to not get my bedtime story, and this was - I would do anything, absolutely to undo the last 5 minutes so that I could still get a bedtime story. I don’t remember if he relented. I hope so. And I hope he will this time. I’d like to go back to before he died and he doesn’t die.