"She had a keen sense of the rhythm of their existence..."

I’ve discovered a new mystery writer I’m enjoying. Ellery Adams has multiple murder mystery series she writes, and I read this paragraph from page 176 in

The Last Word

.

“She noticed that one or two locals greeted Hatcher with a nod or a brief clap on the shoulder. This welcome gave Olivia cause to relax. If the hardened fisherman and laborers of Fish Nets knew Raymond Hatcher, then he posed less of a threat to her. Olivia’s father had been one of these men, and as his child, she had a keen sense of the rhythm of their existence, of motoring to the deep waters well before dawn, of the backbreaking work beneath the unrelenting sun, of the thousand tiny cuts to the arms and hands from serrated fish scales. Every face in the bar was marked by the sea, the sun, and the struggle to make ends meet.”

Strong memories of my parents streamed in when I read this.

My dad considered himself uneducated, but there are so many lessons he taught me that I could have gotten no other way.

I’m so grateful to have a “keen sense of the rhythm of their existence,” of laborers, farmers, hourly workers and those who live by the work of their hands. I understand and value folks of that ilk thanks to my dad and hours spent by his side on job sites and in tractors and hauling soy beans to the scales or walking around on the ramps above the cattle pens at the sale barn.

And oh the joy of walking around at the hospital or nursing home with my mom. That has to be where my love of all things medical began. Seeing her starched nursing cap stuck to the mirror in the bathroom growing up, the closet in the third bedroom filled with her all white polyester uniforms, spending the evenings with Dad while Mom was off saving lives. It’s all wrapped up together.

Gosh, I’ll be interested to hear what lessons our children take from their childhood. I hope they find half the value in the lessons of daily life that I was gifted from my parents.