August 10th was my dad’s birthday. That morning I woke up and -like every day- set up my altar, stretched, meditated. Stanley Dale Squire would have been 77. He was raised in Miami’s concrete monster housing projects and was one of the first people in his family to graduate from college (Aunt Dollie was the first and ended up getting a Master’s degree from Indiana U.) My dad always wanted to travel and intended on retiring, buying a Winnebago, and driving around the USA, Canada, maybe even Mexico and then South America. A year before retirement, he had his first stroke. And then another. And then 15 years of strokes, paralysis, and hospice before passing away in January 2021. He never got to buy his Winnebago or see the Grand Canyon.
But when I was a kid we did take family trips to California, Texas, New Orleans, and DC. He did manage to get some traveling done in his life. So I try to take him along with me on these adventures.
On the altar. In 2017 I was living in LA and my friend called me up one morning and said ‘let’s just jump on a plane and go to Japan.’ That sounded so nice but…I had meetings that week. So she went and I stayed behind and regretted that.
A year after my dad passed away a friend said ‘meet me in London.’ And I thought about my dad and the Winnebago he never got to buy and said ‘I’ll be there.’ And then ‘let’s go to South Africa,’ and then another friend said ‘you want to meet in France,’ and ‘how about Serbia?’ Yes, let’s do it! Happy 77th, Dad! We’ve been to London, Paris, Berlin, Frankfurt, Helsinki, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Reykjavik, Cape Town, Belgrade, Zagreb, Slovenia, Vienna, Nice, Bordeaux, Milan, Venice, Florence, Rome, Copenhagen, Vancouver, Edmonton, Montreal, and Las Vegas…just this year. Don’t know what’s next, but I’ll pack my bags and my altar. He’s coming with me.
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