Dad and the ladybug umbrella

My new job is located in a ritzy office tower that offers complimentary white umbrellas to borrow when it rains. I stepped outside for a brief walk on my lunch break, not realizing it was about to rain, and everyone emerged with white umbrellas. It was an odd vision.

It made me think about Dad and his dislike of umbrellas. We had those big ugly plastic umbrellas, the kind that really cover you but take up a ton of space and make a lot of noise when you open them. They would always stick on Dad, so he’d be fiddling and cursing under his breath as he tried to operate it, getting drenched in the process. Still, he was always a gentleman, and he knew better than to let Mom get her newly-styled hair wet!

I had a ladybug umbrella, with a red and black design printed on the clear plastic. There were a few times Dad had to hold my umbrella as I was coming from school or had my hands full for another reason, and of course he looked silly, a grown man holding cartoonish ladybugs high over his head. But he managed to keep me dry and do his duty as a father.

I’ve written before about how there was a ladybug that visited me at my last job and stuck around with me for awhile. So far no ladybugs have managed to enter my new office, but I was reminded yesterday of my sweet little ladybug umbrella and my dad protecting me from the rain.