Dad sneezed in the sunshine. In these past three years where he willingly-but-sadly gave up driving, I noticed the sneezes more than ever. Our car rides often began with a sneeze, a digging for a pair of sunglasses in his newly-acquired man bag, an “oh well!” if the glasses couldn’t be located, and then another digging in my car for a spare pair of his daughter’s sunnies. We both had large noggins (for all the many amazing thoughts in our brains!) so sunglasses could be shared.

When Andrew and I cleaned out Mom and Dad’s car to pass on to our nephew Noah we found roughly 77 pairs of Dad-sunnies stashed away.

During Dad’s last year of car rides with me we eventually stashed a pair of his glasses in my passenger door. I can be remarkably unsentimental about possessions, but this particular manly pair of sports sunnies HAS to stay put. It’s a touch of normalcy I’m not ready to let go of, a teeny bit of my dad that is still riding shotgun.