Ode to my dad

Cross posted from my featured member thread on Gaia Networking.

I am grateful for my father. He's a molecular spectroscopist. He's quiet, soft spoken, intelligent, and caring. I told him about my upcoming trip to the big chat and mentioned it might be about how to be happy. He quipped,
“Happy? I know the secret to being happy.”
“What's the secret?”
“Take spectra.”
That's his job and he loves it. To take spectra means to use lasers to inspect a molecule enough to identify its various atom components. You find out what colors are absorbed and reflected and somehow can tell what atoms are there.

He went on, “I've taken spectra all my life and I'm always happy.”

Ode to my dad! He had a shirt and passed it on to me when I was a teenager. It said, “Spectroscopists do it with frequency and intensity. The Coblenz Society.”

He makes googoo faces to newborns through to toddlers in the grocery store. He quacks like a duck to them. He walks the golf course every day, not to play golf, but to walk his dog and collect stray lost golf balls. He has a collection of thousands of color sorted golf balls stored in five gallon buckets in his garage. If he ever gets his own business going, it could be called, "Bob's Balls." He re-sells the balls to the golfers in his community. It brings him joy to search for golf balls through the tall grass and shallow streams. 

Thanks, Dad, for everything you are. I love you.