Happy Father's Day!

As I sat down to write my blog, to be honest, I kept thinking of the Mother's Day blog I wrote about a month before. You know, that Mother's Day blog was actually written months before Mother's Day because I had written somewhere something about mother nature and how it reminded me of my mom. I remember writing it on a receipt from the gas station when I had to fill up the car while my dad used the bathroom. It was kind of like a post it to remind myself to write about it for Mother's Day. Then, of course, I lost the receipt, but at least I remembered vaguely what I wrote that rainy day at the gas pump.

So why am I writing about the behind the scenes of my Mother's Day blog when it's Father's Day? I did no preparing for this blog except for writing this all out on a note pad the night before at around 2:50am. I just watched a scary movie and I wanted to take my mind off it by writing and then I remembered Father's Day . . . oh yeah!

I guess I always thought of fathers or father figures as people who are . . . hmmmm . . . kind of hard to explain. They're always there in the background. The mom would take the spotlight because she was physically connected to the child (or children) or there's a kind of motherly bond with the kids that's assumed and impossible to break because it seems so natural. But the father has a slightly different perspective. The father can never truly understand the physical labor the mother went through at childbirth nor can he feel a real motherly love. If the mother takes the spotlight, the father does everything else, holding the whole production together, supporting the lead star and all that they both have produced. I mean the father is only fitting, no?

That's exactly how I feel with my dad and I think that's the reason I hadn't really prepared for this blog -- because he's so busy in the background, making sure everything's in check, running smoothly, and I ignorantly took advantage of his being there, always there.

I'm sorry, Daddy! I think a thank you for you is in order as well as an opening up of my eyes!

This is the life of my dad: he wakes up super early every morning. On weekends he cooks breakfast (best egg and ground beef with onions and pepper omelet in the world). Otherwise, he would drive himself and our neighbor to the train station for their commute to work. He goes to work on week days and comes home, ready to cook dinner. Then he lets us children eat it while he waits for my mom so he can eat dinner with her! That is just . . . he's the guy to learn from, folks! Fellas, take notes. Some nights he takes my mom out on joyrides and some nights he plays tennis with me.

Once I was in a car with him and he told me how he understands how some dads just work, work, work, to bring home the dough and they never see their kids. And he learned this through past experiences - fathers he had met, maybe on the train ride home. He didn't want to be one of those guys. You know he used to smoke when I was about four or five years old. He knew he had to quit because it wasn't healthy for us. That was enough to get him to stop smoking quite easily. Although I do remember my Mom telling my four year old self to take his packet of cigarettes out of his jacket pocket hanging to bring it to her while he was in the garage smoking. Don't worry, a couple of nicarette patches and he was free. I always wondered why it was so easy for him to quit and I like to think it was because of his determination to keep the production in check.

So I guess I just want to thank all fathers and father figures who try their best to make sure the love in the family always burns as much as it did when he first met his wife.

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY!!!