Unicorns-1.3

Me-and-DadIntroductory Comments:

http://go.liverfoundation.org/goto/cyktrussell

[audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/unicorns13.mp3]

unicorns13.mp3

Hello and welcome my friends.  This is Chris and this is the third in my series of personal podcasts that I am doing, to air out my brain and deal with my father’s cancer and gear up to run for the Liver Foundation at the Boston Marathon this year.

Note:  Even though this is on the RunRunLive Podcast feed, this is NOT the RunRunLive podcast.  You have fair warning to skip now because I’m not talking about running.  Standard RunRunLive episodes will be labeled as such.

As part of this project, whatever this project is, I’m collecting donations for the American Liver Foundation for my running of the Boston Marathon this year.  I wanted to layer on some purpose for the event and make it more personal.

The donation links are in the show notes and at http://go.liverfoundation.org/goto/cyktrussell

My story is that I already had a number for this year’s race.  I Didn’t need to fundraise, but with my Dad’s health declining I thought it would be a decent thing to do to dedicate this to him and my family.

…

I’m the youngest of 4.  I have two older sisters and an older brother.  We didn’t always get along with each other as siblings do but we are close and working through my Dad’s cancer has given us the opportunity to spend more time together.  It’s been fun to talk through shared family experiences and memories.

As the youngest I don’t have the depth of memories as my brother and sisters, but they are there and as we spend time together they are unearthed like the quite turnings of some dusty album.  There’s nothing bad there.  There is some funny stuff.  Mostly it is bits and pieces and vignettes that we can compare notes on.

I remember my Dad coming home from work one day with a full size electric organ for the living room.  My sisters were both taking piano lessons and I guess he thought this would give them some additional enablement.

At some point we acquired a full size piano as well at some point.  My Mom taught my girls how to play songs on it when they went for visits.

My Dad designed a built a giant two story car garage out of pre-stressed concrete beams and I can remember helping shingle the roof with cedar shakes.  Snapping the chalk lines, as a kid, and knocking the shingle nails true, row by row, all day long.

He and my brother would work on cars together in that garage.  They had every tool and machine needed to do anything.  I remember one time in the 80’s I dropped my car off at the house.  It needed a universal joint in the front end. I was going to help them replace it (which for me meant handing them tools).  I went for an errand and by the time I came back they had it done already.

My Dad and I would go for walks in the woods in New England.  I don’t remember the walks so much as the trees. I still can identify every tree in New England by its leaves and bark.  If pressed I could make a serviceable whistle from a young willow sapling with a jackknife – which was one of our spring rituals.

The red oak, the white pine, the ash – used for axe handles and hockey sticks – the poplar, the white and grey birch, the pignuts and shagbark hickories – whose bounty we would collect in the fall for fireside cracking and snacking – the hawthorn and elderberry.  My connection to the natural world that I treasure so dearly was born in those New England summers.

My Dad loved to chop wood to feed the wood stove all winter long.  He taught me how to swing an axe.  His favorite axe was a light, thin-bladed axe for limbing the felled trees, and he would grind the cheeks of splitting axes to create the perfect tool.

He taught me how to swing a maul to split the green hard wood and how to stack the split logs so that they would dry.  He showed me that you could split any log with a sledge hammer and wedges.

The wedges in my garage came from his co