Chats with Pops.

I just talked to my dad on the phone

for an hour and a half.

He stayed up until 11:30 his time

(and this man goes to bed early)

to tell me about

my great-great-great grandfather,

Christian Olsen.

I asked him about when he proposed to my mom,

because I never get tired of hearing

that he was so in love with her

he just had to call her on the phone

on a Monday morning,

and ask her to marry him.

He told me about military police

patrolling the streets in Uruguay

when he was a missionary there in the 1970s.

He told me about how he missed America's bicentennial

because he was in South America.

I wanted to cry.

His dad died when he was 29

and his dad was 66.

In seven years,

I'll be 29,

and my dad will be 65.

I told him not to die,

and he said okay.