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 By Mary A. Flowers
Just as mothers and sons share a special bond, so too do fathers and daughters. It was that way with my Dad and me. My Dad loved to tell of coming home from work late at night when I was a baby. When he opened the door to the apartment, there I would be, standing in my baby bed, waiting for him. If he looked my way and smiled, I would grin from ear to ear and bob up and down until he would come pick me up. He would carry me to the kitchen and hold me on his knee while he ate a bedtime snack of cereal and milk. He would give me a bite and then he would take a bite. Sometimes he would bypass me and my pouty bottom lip would stick out and I would almost start to cry. That would all straighten out when he would give me another bite. This special time we shared lasted for many months. "I felt a little sad when I came home one night and you were sound asleep in your crib," he said. After that I did not wake up at night anymore. It was the late 1940's, and we lived in an apartment in downtown Fort Worth. The downtown was alive on Saturdays with people coming to town to shop. To give my Mom a break, she would dress me up in a frilly little dress and Daddy would take me with him and we would walk all over downtown and window shop. I was just the right size to sit in the crook of his arm and my little chubby hands would hold onto his shoulder. He bragged about how people would tell him what a pretty little girl he had. Through the years my Dad and I had many special moments. Ours was an easy relationship. We didn't have to be doing anything special. It was special enough sharing whatever we were doing at the moment. When my Dad was younger, he would work on his automobiles. Often he would call to me to help him when he worked on the brakes. I would sit in the car and press the brake pedal whenever he would tell me to do so. To this day, when I smell brake fluid I am taken back to that time with my Dad.
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