Special Day

Today my coffee tastes especially good..... it's Father's Day! I'm sitting on my back deck under the gazebo in the shade. I just had breakfast and now I am having coffee and blogging. I haven't blogged much lately because there hasn't been much to say. But today is a great day!

I envy my wife who blogged about her father last evening. She has good, loving memories of her father. I wish I could say the same. I never knew a father that loved me, at least, not past my early childhood years. 

I remember the time he busted the belt on my backside.... a whipping I didn't deserve, although I got plenty of whippings I did deserve. I remember him shaking me and bouncing my head off a block wall because I didn't make curfew one night. I missed curfew by 15 minutes. I remember him sitting in restaurants talking with a slur and nearly falling asleep because he was drugged too heavily (he had a heart condition). I remember him and mom arguing and fighting into the early hours of the morning. And in his later years I remember him sitting at my kitchen table calling up all the bad things that everybody ever did to him, and how he could never forgive them. Most of these people were his parents and siblings. I remember my father as a broken and bitter man. 

Unlike my wife's experience with her father where he never told her that he loved her, but she knew he did, my father told me he did love me, but I knew he didn't. 

My father is gone now. He passed away several years ago. His memory does live on. I forgave my father several years before he died, but I could never get him to forgive others. Surprisingly, I miss my dad, the one I had and the one I wish I had had.

Yes, there were some good times with dad. He took us kids hunting in the north woods of Minnesota. He took us to the beaches of North Long Lake. And when we begged enough, he would buy us a nickel cone at the Dairy Queen (that's a dollar cone today). Every once in a while dad would help us sweep off the roof to our basement home and help us clean the garage.

I appreciate all my children, who remembered me this Father's Day! It's been an honor to be your father. And, thank you for the fine grandchildren you have given me. I want to be the best father that I can be..... even though you are now all grown and have families of your own.

I love you all very much!  That makes my coffee taste really good.