Snapshot of Dad on the Wall Above the Fireplace

My father is the clear, amber water of an Adirondack lake under morning fog
and the nearly silent slip of a canoe paddle leaving tiny whirlpools in its wake.
My father is bluegrass music
and a cider mill in a white barn.
He is sprawling gardens, warm cast-iron and old wooden fences at 19th-century living history museums. 
He is tar-scented old ship ropes and the stones of ghost-strewn battlefields.
My father is twilight backyard campfires under a lilac tree. 
He is the smell of
new-turned earth,
just-picked sweet peas and tangy, sun-warm tomatoes,
roasted pumpkin seeds,
cut grass,
sawdust,
popcorn and
burning lantern oil in snow forts.
My father is what it felt like to climb out my bedroom window, lie on porch-roof shingles on a warm summer night, and lose ourselves in the stars.
He is the balance in my backbone as I learned to ride my bike in a hillside graveyard. 
The strong push into toboggan-flight.
He is the Yes of my first pocket-knife.
Hot chocolate and donut diner-stop at 5:00 AM.
He is long walks at sunset into cricket-swell and the gathering dark.
St. Francis statue under the pine tree, stone arms laden with birdseed.
He is quiet arms around my heartbreak.
He is "Leaving on a Jet Plane", a Forget-Me-Not necklace around my mother's neck and dancing her to laughter in the kitchen.
Late Saturday afternoons crafting dinner like a long, contemplative prayer, an ode to comfort, presence and family, NPR on the radio.
He is sitting on the porch, watching thunderstorms roll through, the lightning-limned scent of rain on the wind.
I first recognized happiness as it sprang from the lines around his eyes when he laughed.
I know temperance and patience by the measure of his words.
I know humor and story-telling by their cadence.
His rich and steady spirit has telegraphed to me across all the moments of a beautiful life, like the sparks and pops of pine sap in the camp fire.
I have collected him all the years of my life. 
Fireflies in mason jars.

Happy Birthday, Dad - All my Love, Always.                                            (Photo by Britta Solan)