Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Getting Close To Dad A Wait Well Worth It

I was 7 when I prayed dad would die in a car crash on the freeway coming home from work.

He was a responsible, loving father who would have killed anyone who harmed me. But he also was the family disciplinarian, and I was waiting for a spanking.

My selective memory had blocked out dad’s bear hugs and snuggly lap and remembered only Spanking Man, the evil purveyor of pain. Die, Spanking Man.

Luckily, I had no power over fate and dad survived, because there were tender times ahead for us.

Dad represented authority and discipline to me throughout childhood. I admired his intelligence and unquestionable character and loved him with awe more appropriate for a superhero. But I feared him, too, and that stopped me from spending much time alone with him.

As I aged and had my own children, I began to understand dad a little more. Disciplining techniques had changed in 20 years, but the motivation was the same - we each wanted to raise capable, confident children.

That revelation helped me outgrow my fear of dad, and that’s when my admiration for him exploded. I liked this guy who knew how to tell jokes and take teasing, who was generous beyond reason and believed that hard work strengthens the soul, who still treated my mother like his sweetheart after 48 years and hugged my daughters and me as if he were our sole energy source.

I wanted to spend time with him. So, for his Labor Day birthday this year, I took dad on his first white water rafting trip.

We talked in the car all the way from Coeur d’Alene to the launching point on Montana’s Clark Fork River. He joked in the raft about how wet we were and laughed when he almost flew out. We fought as a team to soak other rafters in our group and to paddle the most in sync.

We lay on our backs on the hot rock beach at lunch time and silently watched the pine trees bend in the wind. We made plans to kayak and ride horses together. We marveled that the two of us hadn’t spent more time together in my 41 years.

I’m just as much in awe of dad as ever, but now I’m finally old enough to enjoy him. It was worth the wait.

What a blast

If Bonners Ferry’s Betsy Faber is like most teenagers, she probably was looking for an excuse to get out of class her first week in 10th grade last year. But when a bomb threat sent all students to the bleachers for three long hours while teachers searched the building, Betsy decided she liked the safety of class.

“It was kind of traumatizing for the second day of school, especially in little Bonners Ferry,” Betsy writes.

Sticky situation

Coeur d’Alene’s Kirsten Inghilterra fell through a loft and cut her chin a few days before she was supposed to start kindergarten at Bryan Elementary School. Her doctor dad, Jerry, fixed her up with some pink bandages, but Kirsten didn’t want to start school that way.

When Bryan Principal John House saw Kirsten’s flashy bandages the first day of school, he admired them and then went one better. He told Kirsten that if she still was wearing the strips the following week, he hoped she’d bring him one. She did, and now she’s stuck on school.

They go way back

Hayden’s Craig Sternberg is 47 and thousands of miles from his childhood neighborhood on Long Island, N.Y. But he still sees his two best friends from tricycle days.

“We’ve gone all the way from talking about our dates to talking about how the bowels flow,” he says.

Harrison’s Karen Young grew up with Barb Johnson in Chicago. They were inseparable until Karen turned 16 and moved to Spokane. Letters and visits pulled the friendship through nearly 50 years of marriages, births, deaths, divorces, remarriages and retirement.

“Her friendship remains one of the richest and most rewarding experiences of my life,” Karen says.

What friendship tale can beat that? Pull out your best for Cynthia Taggart, “Close to Home,” 608 Northwest Blvd., Suite 200, Coeur d’Alene 83814; send a fax to 765-7149 or call 765-7128.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo