My Dads Sheds...

I love my Dad.

We've had a long journey together and a lot of the beginnings were not smooth sailing. But some where along the way I figured out how much alike we are on the stuff that really matters. I still cry a lot and he gets frustrated a lot but we muddle through with courage and great heart for keeping on working on it. There's none of us perfect but we're all each other has. There are lot of Aussie Dads and their kids who are like this. And Dads days each year can be tricky.

But one of those things I figured out at some point is that we both love stuff. We collect it. We keep it. We buy it. We look out for and delight in bargain prices for it. We also find it hard to let go of it.

As we now know a passion for things can be some part hereditary, I'm graced to have figured this out early and so my journey has and will have many stages of reducing, refining and recognising what are my needs versus my wants and why each seems to be so.

I grew up in a busy house. A productive house. It was also very full in some ways. For a few reasons we didn't have many visitors around but that didn't stop us going out there to meet people and do things - just not at our place. We had a few car bodies around in the yard for spare parts as the cars we loved and drove in were vintage before we got them. That house, like most Australian backyards had a shed. Now, it has at least three sheds and Dad has had another huge farm shed elsewhere he's had for over 20 years.

When ever I'd look inside the one at our place there was never much room, but all the stuff seemed to be ordered - least that's how it seemed to a kids eye view. The widgets with the widgets, the bodgets with the bodgets and the doodads all together some where else. I remember a stage where the walk way was maybe 3 feet wide but more of my memories are of a narrow pathway less than a 2 foot.

There's so much of him in those things in those sheds and one day it will be the right time to be in that shed and gently widening those paths, figuring out what to keep, throw away, sell or recycle and who else might love or need the rest.

One day, where ever he is on that day, I hope he will know that I, like so many children, as a adults clearing out these treasure troves they've created will walk in with the greatest respect for beautiful stuff.