When I complained that my wheelchair looked boring, he painted little yellow suns on its wheels.
When I couldn’t reach my favorite books, he installed a pink butterfly button connected to a homemade reaching attachment.
“Every princess needs wings,” he announced.
“Dad, that’s embarrassing.”
“You love it.”
I did.
He built a little secret drawer beneath my seat for treasures.
Whenever I outgrew a wheelchair, he transferred that drawer to the next one.
On my first birthday after the accident, he slipped a handwritten note inside.
He did the same every year afterward.
And when I struggled over the uneven pavement outside our house, he invented a little red lever that adjusted part of my chair’s support.
It wasn’t pretty.
Sometimes it squeaked.
But it helped.
He also attached a tiny brass bell.
I hated that bell.
“I’m not a bicycle!”
He laughed.
“Then stop ringing it at me.”
He never removed it.
Years later, I learned he’d installed it because he worried I might need help when he was too far away to hear me.
That was Dad.
Always finding ways to make my world bigger.
Even when his own kept getting smaller.
I loved watching him turn ordinary things into something that made my life easier.
Before long, I wanted to make things too.
By 11, I was taking apart broken radios.
By 13, I could repair most things Dad brought home.
He noticed.
Of course he did.
He cleared a corner of our shed and built me a workbench.
He brought home discarded motors, wires, and switches.
One Christmas, he bought me a secondhand laptop.
I later discovered he’d sold his favorite motorcycle to pay for my laptop and the equipment I needed for my little projects.
“Dad!”
“What?”
