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Sunday, June 17, 2012

Another Father's Day, Another Memory

Happy Father's Day to all celebrating.  This certainly isn't the first post on a Father's Day from Deer Run, and fingers crossed it will not be my last.

I miss my dad, and think of him a lot.  He was my hero, mentor, inspiration, role model, dad, father, advisor, and the best, most trusted advocate I had, or ever will have, on my side.  While I may not have been his mentor (daughters aren't meant for that role, are we?) I do know that I was in his top 4 of most trusted advocates... the others being my mother and siblings.  I earned it, as did the rest of my family. My family is tight, and have weathered many storms together.

I was thinking about a Father's Day post for about a week. What could I write that I never wrote before? Not much, partly because if you read my blog, you already know that my dad was everything to me, and its been said before. So, I thought "I know! I'll put up a photo!"  Then began the task of going through photographs.  My life slipped by in decades of images. I looked at some photographs of dad of very long ago, before I was even born.  Dad was a handsome man, but very humble.  And, he HATED having his picture taken.  I have so many photos of dad with a hand in front of his face, a coffee cup (with a cigarette in hand, sadly) held at the perfect height for obscurity, gift boxes at Christmas in place of a face, and blah blah blah.  Maybe some people would be sad by this, but not me.  I laughed.  With every photo of dad's face obscured, I could hear his voice in my head, and good natured laughter of family and good friends around.

And, then I realized yet another commonality I have with dad.  I hate to have my picture taken, I really do.  I've masted the menu in front of the face at restaurants, sunglasses and hats whenever a camera may be lurking, the quick turn of the head, and so forth.

My dad relished his privacy almost like no one I ever knew.  He was fanatical.  Data, photos, documents.  Anything.  I think maybe it was born when he began working for a large computer company as an engineer and saw all the data and information that flew past him at lightning speed.  He was there to make sure the machines (and later as technology evolved, computers) kept running, and fix them when they broke.  He feared his privacy would be compromised by technology and people.  To underscore his point, he related stories to me about information that I'd never tell anyone else because it was understood that what's said within family stays within family.  Then again some of the stories sounded so crazy and unbelievable if I repeated them, I'd be thought of as crazy.  But, the stories were all fact. Dad was a good conversationalist, when he chose to share information and experiences, there was no need for embellishment. Dad had some amazing experiences in his life, and a vast amount of knowledge. Most people just never knew, as he chose to walk the Earth as an ordinary and very humble man.

I like my privacy too, maybe you wouldn't know it.  I write on a public blog, I have a job where my accessibility to people and media is needed, and I am no longer afraid to take risks when there's injustice happening, be it in my family, or victims of abuse... animals, people or the environment.  Putting oneself "out there" so to speak is really hard for lots of people, including me.  I don't like conflict, then again who does.  But, this beautiful evolution of being able to stand up when "someone" needs to would never have happened within me without my father, both directly and indirectly.  He continues to guide me even though he's not here.

As I flipped through those countless photographs this week of my dad, I remembered things mostly forgotten, even as benign as his loathing of having his picture taken.

I've written public and private tributes to my dad, which is never easy to do, and just seems to get even harder the longer he's gone. "They" are wrong.  Time doesn't heal.  It does other things, and makes me miss him more. But, it also reminds me that he still has a large hand in my development even at this stage and age of the game.  And, I realized this week another fantastic trait dad passed down, that I hate to have my picture taken and I can (and probably will) put up another "family portrait" of 2 photos in my living room. One where dad is holding a Christmas package up in front of his face, and  one of me taken decades ago doing the exact same thing.  Like father, like daughter.

I decided not to post a photograph today because I don't think dad would have wanted me to do so.

I sincerely wish all the dads out there a Happy Father's Day.  As I always say, almost anyone can be a father, but it takes someone very special to be a dad.



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