In Regards to Val’s Lovely Post…
Reading Val’s post that made me think about this…
The one thing that I wish I had from my childhood were these tapes my dad used to send me. As a child, my dad read to me every night. We’d load up whenever Scholastic Books’ made its rounds and it’s safe to say all of my crime solving abilities can be linked back to being read every Encyclopedia Brown and Nate the Great ever written.
When my dad started to travel for work, he’d take the books with him, record himself reading them (with instructions on when to turn the page), and then overnight the book and the tape to me so that his youngest son could listen to his voice and read along before I fell asleep.
That’s my father.
When we were cleaning out our house to be sold, I searched everywhere I could to find those tapes. I never found any. I often picture my dad sitting in some dingy hotel room, old Radio Shack mic in his hand, doing what he probably thought was the closest thing he could do to not being there. I always knew traveling for work must have ate him up inside and that providing for his family was the only thing that got him through it. I know that in my line of work I’ll probably have to travel a lot. I hope I grow to be as strong as him.
It would have been nice to be able to leave my child a tape of his grandfather reading him a bedtime story. Or just a really mean case to solve.
