On March 19, 1922

Lloyd Harris was born in Ringgold, Georgia--the second-youngest of five children.  If he were still alive today, I'd call and wish him a happy 92nd birthday--and he'd answer the phone singing, "Happy Birthday to me!" He always did that.

He was the kind of daddy whose presence a daughter feels every day, not just on his birthday.  He was funny.  Unlike me, he could always remember jokes and he knew just which person would appreciate which joke.  He delivered many one-liners that we still repeat in our family.

Like "Hide the pie!"  If someone came to the door during mealtimes, he'd say "Hide the pie!"--whether we had pie or not.

Like "Letting the raw side drag....."
On our last visit, May 2002, before he died the following July, he was a strong and healthy 80-year-old with twinkly blue eyes.  We were walking in his neighborhood when he said, "Linda Gayle, I can tell you're living your life your own way--just letting the raw side drag."

"What does that mean?" I asked him.

"I don't know," he said.  "Sometimes I say things I don't know what it means."

When I drove into their driveway, he was always standing at the door waiting, then he'd rush out to the car and hug me and say, "Come in this house!"

He could get on tirades about things that struck him as wrong in the world, but he never once expressed any anger toward me.  I never saw him yell at anyone.

The last time I saw him, he was in intensive care for pneumonia.  When I arrived at the ICU, he hugged me through all the tubes, then he wrote on a cardboard fan, "Pencil, I want to write you a note."

He was confused--in that he was already writing with a pencil--but I went out into the hall as if to find him one.  When I came back, he was asleep.  I never knew what he'd have written in that note.

On the day before he died, I got an email from my friend Gary in Texas (he who himself died a year and a half ago): "Linda, you've had more than most people ever do.  Lloyd will never leave you because he's given you yourself, a deep sense of worth and belovedness....Nothing can undermine that.  You'll always have your daddy."

It's true: I'll always have him, in my heart, in memories, and in hunches I feel from time to time that seem like messages from him.

Even so, I wish I had him right here, at my house, and that I could make him a pound cake or a banana pudding! I wish he could see what a cool little house this is, the one he gave me for a Christmas present.  I wish that all his great-grandchildren could know and love him--like everyone who ever met him did.

On my wedding day, 1967. 

"I wouldn't change a thing about that boy!"
Lloyd always said about Will.
Here he is, in Helotes, teaching Will to play the guitar.

These two were "best buddies." 

Daisy and Granddaddy and Will

I wish Lloyd knew that Will and Veronica would get married!
This was back when they were dating in high school;
they went their separate ways for 13 years, then found each other again.
Here we are celebrating their 18th birthdays!

In the last year of his life, Lloyd and Carlene went to Virginia to meet Baby Jackson.
I hope Jackson remembers this day in some way!
 I wish Lloyd could see him now: almost a teenager!