Nineteen years after he died.
Last month I trimmed the big cedar elm in the backyard. While I was up on the 30-foot ladder, I dedided to replace the nylon rope that I’d tied up in the tree. I put that rope up there when Maly was a little girl. It was used for a plastic tire swing that I finally found and bought for her. It was the same plastic tire swing that I had on the back patio at our house in Bear Creek.
That nylon rope somehow got cut and spliced in the middle, and Mara had since put all kinds of knots in it, probably as a way to shorted the length of the rope as she’d gotten older. I didn’t like that old nylon rope with the splice and the knots in it. I’d found this old tow rope that dad had in the barn a long time ago, not long after he’d died. I kept it because I knew it was a good piece of rope. Dad always had good ropes. I decided that this good piece of rope could be for the tire swing. No knots. Just a good piece of strong rope.
But the rope was tied in a loop on one end and latch hook on the other. The looped end is hooked into a carabiner and an eye bolt that’s screwed into a limb in the tree. The other end has the latch hook looped into the rope. I needed to shorten the rope, which meant I had to untie Dad’s knot. But I studied it and took pictures of it before I did.
I shorted the rope and hung the tire swing where it should be, with some room for the rope to strech. Although I don’t think it will. That rope is probably older than me.
I sat there alone in the backyard, grinning to myself as I tied the new loop through the latch hook, just like Dad’s knot. And I could hear his voice. He said, “There ya go. That’s not going anywhere.” And then he’d give me that smile.
I miss the hell out of him.