Googling for Daddy

I'll get straight to it; I find myself missing my father today. Something very specific set me off. I saw a painting at work that, for whatever reason, spoke to me. It was a picture of a what I thought was a house or barn- very rural- with autumn leaves. The artist name read Peter Keating and when I looked it up online I found that it's called "The Mill". As I looked through his other works my heart began to ache... I mean, really ache. His paintings reminded me of a very specific and brief time when our family lived in rural Connecticut. We lived there the last few years that we were all together. When we all finally moved away from there, my father went to Chicago and my mother, sister and I moved to Maine; the family as we knew it had disintegrated. So, today Peter Keating made me miss my Dad and remember briefly what if felt like to be a member of what I like to refer to as "my original family". His paintings made me long for the days when I'd hear his car pull into the gravel driveway and I'd run up the lawn and around the barn to greet him. Made me miss the way snow would pile up against the fence around our property in the wintertime. Made me reminisce about waiting for the school bus with my sister on fall mornings; watching the leaves fall... like jewel toned feathers. Collecting rocks and pebbles that appealed to me from our property and storing them away in secret places in my room. So few memories have stayed with me that include my father or the times when we were all together. Mr. Keating's paintings brought it all rushing back without warning. So, what's a girl to do when she misses her dad? Google, I guess. If I put his name in Google, I can read articles and blogs he has written. I can even find fairly current photos- which today I stared at for a period of time. It's pretty sad that that is what I have to do to feel close and to ease the ache. Most of the time, it works and I can move forward. Today, seeing him on Google... living a life that I'm never a part of, made me feel further away from him instead of closer. I feel for all of us who are missing a piece of the puzzle of who we are. Thankfully we become pieces of our own puzzle as we get older... pulling in others who love us and whom we love to create the final picture. In a perfect world, I could call my Dad and swing by after work. We could laugh together about the time when I begged him to let me help him paint the barn and wouldn't let up until he finally agreed; only to paint for 5 minutes before realizing that painting barns was highly overrated and running off to play. Or about "Nasty Rooster"... our rooster who used to chase anyone was was in the yard and who actually got my sister in the leg with a few good pecks. We could talk and laugh about our shared memories and experiences; happy to leave them behind for the newer memories that we'll create in the years ahead. Roosters and barns from 20 years ago is all I've got... Love you Dad......always miss you.