I sit at the kitchen table, sipping coffee, pouring through recipes online, preparing to go grocery shopping. NPR is filling the house with human voices. The open windows are allowing the sounds of peace to slip in. Anna sits by my side creating wonders with her play-dough.


It's Monday!  This is our routine. Well, except for the NPR. That's new today. As an adult I have had an aversion to listening to the radio news program. As a child my Dad was an NPR junky. It was always on, in all the rooms of the house. He said it was so he could float freely from room to room without missing a single thing the talking heads were saying. It drove me nuts.  


Later, after I was married, Mom got him a little ipod. I think it drove her nuts too.


I remember Dad picking us kids up from school, or our grandparent's house, in his little red toyota pickup. The manuel truck lacked air conditioning. During the hot seasons the windows were rolled down. I sat squished in between my Dad and my little, very annoying at the time, brother, worming around as I tried desperately to direct my knees out of the way as Dad shifted gears. NPR blasted through the small beat up speakers as I sat sticky hot, with a comical amount of wind blowing through my stringy blonde hair.   


This morning is the first time that I have been able to listen to NPR without having that squished, hot and uncomfortable feeling from childhood emerge. Until just now, if I walked into a room or got into a car and NPR was on, I would ask, to the annoyance of my NPR loving Husband, to have it turned off.  


I'm the same way when it comes to bagpipe music. I was the kid in the pickup line whose Dad BLASTED lovely bagpipe music. He didn't do it to annoy me or anything, he just genuinely loves things I consider weird.  Like, tai chi and civil war reenacting. 


I think he still gets up in the middle of the night to listen to a radio program called Coast to Coast. I once sat up with him to listen to a news story about a possible alien invasion. 


Maybe it's his fault that I am obsessed with the Elvis Presley conspiracy theory. 

Elvis is NOT dead, people. Look at the evidence.

These are some of my fondest memories of my Dad.


I wonder what things my children are picking up from me. What things will they look back on and laugh about?  What memories are being made within the normal boring routines of our day that they will hold on to?