Cut paper, glued on chipboard and laminated. This is my Pop's Father's Day postcard. It's from a Kolsch ad. That's a beer from Cologne, Germany. Drinking beer in Germany is full of regional ritual. I have so many awesome beer drinking in Germany memories: bier gardens, sharing tables with strangers, small beers and numerous hash marks on coasters, beer vending machines, German cousins trying to get you drunk, German elders teaching you the right way to do it, heavy liter steins and jokes about drinking arms, pils and alt, kolsch, Jever, German toasts, singing in bars, listening to yodeling in a hidden pub, drinking on relative's patios, sitting in the grass along the Mosel, beer on trains. Man, I'm thirsty. Me and my Pop are weirdly similar. It's become more clear as I've gotten older. And I guess the weird part is really that all the inexplicable things that my father did when I was growing up, now seem like crystal clear unambiguous lessons in what he expected from me. I might not have been smart enough to grasp or articulate it then, but somehow I knew. I always knew what was expected. And I also knew that I probably worried my parents with my own inexplicable to them actions and decisions. I chose my own path and it wasn't the obvious dutiful daughter one they wanted. But the lessons stuck, and I guess it all worked out. I'm proud of them and they are proud of me. Prost Pop!
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