One Month with Dad

The divorce court agreement between my parents was that one month a year I would stay with Dad. Traveling several hours by train or by plane from wherever Mother lived, I needed to make an emotional shift between leaving one parent and going to spend time with the other.

Since Dad lived in Laurel, Mississippi, where I grew up, I had several friends to do things with while Dad was at work. We spent time swimming, playing ping pong, making home-made ice cream, and enjoying the air conditioning while we played at the local bowling alley.

The highlight of my stay was always a two-week trip to another part of the country. One summer we visited Boston, the Maine coast, and Quebec. Another year we drove out west to Grand Canyon, Bryce, Zion, the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone national parks. The drives between those places were long, but seeing new parts of the country was fantastic. We even made it to Mt. Rainier and the Seattle World’s Fair.

Dad was a birder, so wherever we went, he carried a pair of binoculars and a field guide to birds. I have one very clear memory of our speeding down a hot road somewhere in the West. Suddenly Dad stomped on the brakes, backed up the car at high speed, grabbed the binoculars, and after looking carefully at a bird perched on a pole, saying, “Well, I’ll be damned. It’s a yellow-bellied sapsucker!” That was only one of hundreds of sightings of birds, and his hobby would develop into a major event—to be described later.

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