Some of you know this and some of you don’t, so I’ll try to bring everyone fully up to speed at the same time. I have three children — a daughter, Linda Kay Impola, who lives in Horseheads, N.Y., and two sons, Tim, who lives in Huntington, and Bobby, who lives in Fort Wayne.
I see Tim and his wife Samantha and their two kids, Titus and Amy Jean, on a semi-regular basis — usually at an athletic event involving the grandchildren. I see Bobby and his 2-year-old son, Liam, on a much more regular basis. I’ve become Papaw, which was the name my children called my father — their grandfather — and for that I’m pretty much over the moon.
Linda Kay and her husband, Dave (nice name, that), have no children. Yet she’s the one my heart routinely longs for.
This is, of course, because absence truly does make the heart grow fonder. LK is too often merely the voice on the other end of a phone call. I’m sure Susan and I are not the only parents in Wells County who have a hole in their hearts because their grown children are living so far away.
I realize that are advantages to that distance. When my wife and I were raising our children, we lived three hours from my parents and two hours from hers. Our siblings were much closer to our parents, a local phone call from my sister to my parents and from Susan’s sisters to her parents. Sometimes we lamented the distance; sometimes we celebrated the distance.
So when LK can make the trip out here to Hoosierland, it’s a treat.
Those of you who were at Jim O’Donnell’s econonimic forecast here in Bluffton a couple of weeks ago were introduced to my daughter. Jim and I go back a long way and he took the moment to meet her and was bemused — as it almost everyone — by the name of the city she lives in. He noted at the end of his remarks that this young woman had come all the way from Horseheads, N.Y., to hear him.
It was all happenstance. She was present in Bluffton when Jim was scheduled to speak; I paid the $10 and she accompanied me to the breakfast confab. I figured that as DINKs (double income, no kids), they might soon be looking for advice on investments. That’s the target audience for Jim’s remarks each January.
Also, a little father-daughter time is called for, whenever I can find it. I’m a second-shift employee these days, rarely going to bed before 2 a.m. and to sleep before 3 a.m., while she’s an early riser — she’s up at 3:30 a.m. or so to oversee the truck unloading operations at a large Target store. We’re on opposite ends of the workday time spectrum, so it was nice to meet in the middle.
What amazed and amused me was the number of people who came up to her and said they were glad to meet her. They had read so much about her from previous mentions in this space.
I am fond of quoting Calvin Trillin, who routinely wrote about his family (including in a book, “Family Man”). He would tell he wife and children, “I hope you’re not under the impression that what you just said was off the record.” LK, Tim, and Bobby understand that sentiment well, and my grandchildren will soon be in my sights.
When a father has a chance to glow with pride, he has to take advantage of it. My daughter handled being introduced to people she didn’t know with grace and understanding, knowing that these people, for those most part, had some degree of significance to her too-often-distant father.
Horseheads requires an eight-hour drive and about 42 gallons of gas for a round trip. I’ve made the trip enough to know that. I’m glad she made it here for a few days.
daves@news-banner.com
