Darci

When I was young in my career, we lived near San Francisco. I had to travel quite a bit for work in those days and would be gone sometimes for several days at a time. Darci and Jimmie were little and Karen would sometimes take them down to Santa Barbara for a few days to visit with her parents. Then I would fly into SB and we would spend the weekend or a day or two.

Once I had a meeting on the east coast that took me away for a couple of days. When I took the long trip back to California, I went straight to Santa Barbara where my wife was tired from working with the kids for those days I was gone and she needed a break. I was exhausted from the trip, the flight, and a general lack of sleep while I was gone. But knowing that however tired I was didn’t compare to the hard work that Karen had, I was glad to take the kids. When i walked in, Darci and Jimmie attacked me hoping that I would take them somewhere. I agreed and asked where they wanted to go. “To the Pool!! To the Pool!!” My father-in-law was a professor at UCSB and so we could go to the faculty club. The kids bounded into the car while I dragged my tired bones into the drivers seat. They talked excitedly about what they had been doing and I was delighted to listen–just trying to stay awake on the way.

As we drove up to the guard booth on campus, the kids were still overflowing with energy. I stopped to talk to the guard and Darci jumped onto my lap and called out to the guard, “This is my DAD!!!” The guard got a good laugh out of that, but my heart was filled to the brim and about to burst that my little daughter was so proud of me and wanted the guard to know who I was.

Thirty years later now, my heart is still full of love and pride when I think of Darci.