Meet Dad

I was originally going to post this on my dads birthday but one of the stories I will tell isn't the most flattering in someways. I wanted to be fair, and enlightening about the man...



My dad played with this little guy for about an hour. Dad followed him around took orders just like a father would do. What my father doesn't realize is that I did see the look of total regret when he looked up at me just after I took this shot. He didn't know until that time I was watching.



My dad wasn't home when I was young he worked 2 jobs and was going to school full time. My dad realized when Heidi was a baby what all he had missed... I watched it eat at him for years. My dad provided a good life for me and my siblings, but I hated and resent the fact that he was always gone. I really didn't know my father until I was 10. The price to get his education wasn't tallied just in dollar amounts. The tight budgets we lived, the shopping at thrift stores, cooking from scratch, never having new cloths... but honestly we really were happy then in the time of very little.



I realize that my family shouldered the cost of dads education in that regard the dollar value; but my dad shouldered more by watching his youngest daughter grow up and seeing, no living, that Joy... and knowing he'd missed 2/3 of his life.



I've learned about my father since the days of hating him for never being there. I do love my father. I don't hate him for it, I don't wish things were different; I needed to be made strong in this way and you can ask my friends if it was worth it... Dad I want you to know I know why you did it, and the cost wasn't so great that we wont recover. It has molded my life I admit; I'm good at cooking, and can sew... but I also will do everything in my power to not be gone when I am a father. I think that you, my father, will enjoy the grand kids. ;)



My second story is the one thing that shapes my life. It is one of the earliest memories of my father. I can remember it clearly. He has heard my story and hardly remembers the event.

We were traveling to Green River, WY to visit my grandparents there. Along the way we stopped at a rest area to discover that a family had run out of Gas and also out of money. My memory tells me that they had broken down while on vacation in SLC and had had to repair their car to head back to home, Omaha if my memory is correct. (It is BTW :P )

My parents filled their tank and I remember a discussion about some food. even remember the gas station where they got the gas at, it was in Fort Bridger, WY.

Here is the remarkable thing... after my parents did this and got them out on the road I remember the discussion about how their finances where tight and how they would have to adjust to make the maybe $40-$50 fit into a tight budget.

My dad, my parents, taught me a lot in that moment. It has stuck with me in painful detail. I can replay the audio/video in my head each word said each scene, some spoken in German, most in English. I couldn't have been older then 8...



That's my family and always has been, the willingness to help... but that doesn't matter. The effect isn't the same until you see it, and understand the cost personally and you still do it.



In alot of ways my Dad is the most unbearable version of myself I could ever face; the almost exacting copy I am in humor, build, temperament, stubbornness, need for control... that he is.

Some things aren't so unbearable. Somethings make me tear up with pride for the stubborn pigheaded man, who is so much like myself that we don't often get along. Thanks Dad. I love you.



This is my father, my Hero!



(Note: I was going to do my mother as my first real post to my group "Our Human need for Heroes" but now that this is done I think I made the right choice.)