My Father

On the eve of my birthday I started considering something. People celebrate you coming into the world , but you know the celebration should be for the parents who brought you in to this world. There are numerous situations where children grown up, with or without parents, good houses, bad houses, nurturing, non-nurturing. Me I was lucky I grew up in a house with two loving parents. They were smart, caring, nosy (as any good parent should ), and wiser than I gave them credit for. My mother was a rock..dealing with four boys and the nonsense that goes with that...those of you who question this have never seen the apocalyptic mess they can create. She was Referee, Cook, Teacher, Caregiver, and Nurse. and I know we all loved her for it. But I am going to write more about her later..here I want to write about:
DAD--He is amazingly smart, brilliant, strict, loving , would give his shirt off his back...There is an example I think of we were one a family picnic once, I of course was being the petulant teen, but there was a man who obviously was down on his luck looking thru the garbage for food. Dad stopped, took the sandwich that he was going to eat and some chips and a drink and walked over and gave them to this man. It was probably the first "meal" he had eaten in days, that stuck with me over the years. I was a troubled teen, did a lot of things I shouldn't have, caused a lot of problems and fights, and almost every single one of them were directed at my father. I poured every ounce of vitriol out that I had on this man, and he NEVER gave up on me. When most parents would have turned and ran, he tried harder and harder. He did everything to give me the opportunities to succeed and when I fell he was the one that offered out a hand. And just so you know he did not just hand things to me, I worked for it, he made me do that, and I respect him that much more for it.
It reminds me of something Mark Twain said "When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years."
One other fact..this man remarried to my mother, she left the biggest mistake of her life where the only good thing that came out of it was me. But when she remarried to this man, he adopted me, and from day one he has loved me and treated me as his own. And I am his son. It just goes to show that any fool can be a dad and create a baby, but it takes a real man and a loving caring being to be a father.
Dad I know it was tough growing up I understand what you were doing , and I love you for it.
I love you Dad!