Some days I miss one parent more than the other. It varies. Lately, Dad has been on my mind. Yesterday, we went through some of his clothes and boxed some coats and golf shirts up for Goodwill. So many coats! Both Mom and Dad loved buying coats and jackets. Dad's favorite color must've been blue. Had several blue coats--a couple looked very much alike. He had a blue down coat from Eddie Bauer. I remember when he bought it. Probably about 10 years ago. Around the same time, Mom and Dad bought me a down coat from EB as well. They really wanted me to have a warm coat. Even as recently as December, Mom was concerned that my jacket wasn't warm enough. I assured her it was. I didn't walk outside as much. They walked a lot--to church, Mom at the track, Dad at night saying his rosary. Anyway, they had lots of coats. Mom did, too. Eddie Bauer, London Fog--even a new one with the tags still on it. I'm pretty sure she just bought that one when we went to Evansville in November. I know we looked at coats at Macy's that day. It was hard for her to find a coat that fit. They were always too big. She didn't like to wear things that were too big. She wore size 0 or size 2 or petite small--not just petite, but petite small. Maybe that is why when she found a coat that fit, she would buy it. We got rid of the coat Mom was wearing that day. They returned it to us. It was a brown lite down coat from Eddie Bauer. I don't think she'd had it very long, either. Maybe a year. She wore it a lot. It had some trauma to it. It must've been in the front seat with her that day. Anyway, back to Dad. He had lots and lots of golf shirts. Izod, Penguin, Grand Slam. Again, the predominate color was blue. Mom and I used to give him a hard time about always buying blue. Sometimes he'd branch out and buy a wild color, but mostly it was blue. Lots of times when they went to Bloomington to shop, Dad would come back with a new shirt, jacket or shorts--even though it was Mom who wanted to shop in the first place. We got rid of some of his baseball style hats. I kept one that said "Otis Park" on it. I also kept a couple of the polo/golf shirts. In the last couple of years, Dad had started wearing button up short sleeve shirts more. Haven't gotten to those yet. Another favorite hat of Dad's was the herringbone tweed/wool caps--I think the style is called "ivy" or something. Dad almost always wore a hat. Either one of these wool ones or a baseball style. He was wearing a straw hat on the golf course after they told him he had a form of cancer on his ears and needed to protect them from the sun. We got rid of gloves and scarves, too. Mom still had lots of those "head scarves" from the 60's and lots of rain hats.

Geek that I am, I took pictures of everything we boxed up. I want to remember. I just have to.

Love,

Susie