Today is my father's seventy-third birthday

Today is my father's seventy-third birthday. Four-thirty in the morning, I believe.

My sister claimed he didn't want to acknowledge that he was/is getting older (I'd rather it than the other option), so we went to see him on the farm for Father's Day instead. We still celebrated with candles and a cake. Cake!

Unfortunately, Kate couldn't come this year, given her work schedule, but the rest of us managed an evening out at my sister's little house. We even brought home far too much fresh rhubarb, as well as some plants with roots for our own garden, as one of their neighbours was planning on ripping it all out of their own garden anyways. Rose laughed, complained a bit, and ate all of her green beans (a new item).

Before we left the farm, my father pulled out a trunk from the garage, one left over from his mother-in-law (my grandmother). Opening the trunk, we discovered it was far older than that, and belonging to my great-aunt Belle McLennan, who died in the late 1970s. We found her copy of a photo I'd been twenty years trying to get a copy of, sitting in a trunk in the garage the whole time.

Ah well. At least I have a copy of the portrait now. And an original, at that.

Happy Birthday. Here is my father as a wee babe with his own father. Most likely taken in the house my father still lives in (it does look slightly familiar as the kitchen, looking towards the living room).