Sunshine

I remember it being a beautiful, sunny, perfect summer day outside. I was young, maybe 7 or 8, and was being horribly grouchy because I had been forcibly dragged from my warm, cozy sleep nest. My dad wanted to take me for a hike. Well, in all reality, it was not much of a hike, seeing as how we lived in a smallish farmhouse on the prairie, but there was a small, gurgling creek that we frequently fell in while horsing around, and a few trees to build tree houses and imaginary fortresses in. We can call it a walk. My dad, the hardworking farmer at heart, who was, at the time, working to repair the evil invention of the modern man that still frustrates the hardworking white collar classes, also known as the photocopier. He sat in a van, driving around the Southern Alberta countryside, at the beck and call of those who believed their corporate world would end if he did not fix the problem ASAP! We had not spent much time with him lately, as he had been working overtime to suprise us with, quite possibly, the most wonderful gift parents can ever give their overactive children, a trampoline! We spent hours and hours playing dolls, telling stories, having fights and making up, and, last but certainly not least, all of the jumping games you can possibly think of on that trampoline. But I digress. That particular morning, my dad wanted to go for a walk with me. Just me. And I was being disgustingly uncooperative all because I had wanted to sleep. Instead of yelling or insisting, as I might have expected of him, since such ways were the usual, he simply knelt down in the tiny kitchen of that prairie home. He held me by the hands, and opened his mouth, and instead of the beratement that I was certain was coming, the pure, clear notes of his wonderful singing voice emerged. You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. You make me happy, when skies are grey. You'll never know dear, how much I love you, so please don't take my sunshine away. I cried. He took my hand, and led me out into the sunshine, and we walked.