Father's Day

So True

I'm not all that bothered about birthdays and special event days. But I must admit that this card received for Father's day did make me think. It neatly summed up all the times that I had stretched the trust of my three children to breaking point.

I suspect that not many parents corralled three under fives to climb 2,000 foot mountains with the promise of an ice cream when, or if, they got down. And those short cycle rides when they were told it was only another half hour when we still had ten miles including three hills to cycle. The family joke is about the time that I took a short cut over the highest pass in the Sierra Nevada in California when travelling to the west coast. The road climbed to 11,500 feet, and was unmetalled road over much of the distance. We started the drive at 4pm just south of Lone Pine on Highway 395 after already having travelled through Death Valley in a heat of 43°C. We arrived in Fresno at midnight after a drive of over 250 miles on hairpin dirt roads on the Forest Drive and Shermann pass. It is so remote that there are no signs and it does not appear on the maps. It was increasingly hard to convince them that we only had another hour to go when I repeated the assertion for the fourth or fifth time. Never has a Motel 6 appeared such a haven of slumber as when we arrived and scooped the last two rooms.

Still it taught them how to take risks and never to be afraid of time or distance.