Sometimes I miss my Dad so intensely it hurts.  He’s been dead, gone, passed,whatever the polite way of saying it is for ten years now but once in a while I still catch a glimpse of him.

The day of his funeral, after it all became as real as real can be, I headed off in my rental car for a breather to drive down the coastal highway and “chill” as they say.

Rounding a corner, I see a kitchen stove sitting at the end of a driveway.  A decent kitchen stove sitting there obviously waiting to be picked up for a ride to maybe  into the house, maybe to someone else’s kitchen, maybe the dump.

The thing is, I needed knobs for the cool (but missing knobs) vintage stove in my new house and I had been searching on-line and everywhere to find the right ones. And suddenly it became all I could think about.  That I didn’t have knobs for my stove. Not that I had just put flowers  in the fresh damp dirt on my Dad’s grave, but that I needed stove knobs.

I pulled over, got out in my funeral finery and yanked the knobs off the stove just as a man came out and yelled “what the hell are you doing?” I yelled back “stealing knobs for my dead Dad!” as I swung into the driver’s seat, slammed the door and raced off in my little car.

True story. I don’t know what possessed me.  But I think it may have been my Dad, and I smile every time I turn the knobs on my even more vintage stove now.  Not that we are a family of thieves; only in the moment it seems. And sorry to the guy with the stove, but I think you’d understand.