Father's Day

It's not something I think about every day, but I am very lucky to have the dad I have. I just read today's PostSecret and was made freshly aware of that fact. He is a dad who made the Easter Bunny and Santa more than real--notes from both, soot tracks from Santa and Rudolph, yarn trails from the EB and then clues to follow as we got older. It was real enough to me that I believed it until I was 9 or 10, long past most kids. In fact, they both still come to visit.

He is a dad who put notes in my lunch box every day in elementary school with clever little drawings and clues for me to figure out with my classmates, something I thought was just about the coolest thing ever. He is a dad who very calmly handled me getting my first period at the middle school where he was the band director and I was a beyond mortified teenager. He is a dad who keeps his emotions in check when he in fact feels a lot. The only time I've ever seen him cry was after my younger sister had back surgery. He is a dad who has had two families and I think has a lot of regrets about how things have turned out with the first one. Luckily my brother, at least, has finally decided it's time to move beyond the past and has come back into Dad's life even though my sister has not.

Dad is so many things, and I don't mean to imply that perfect is one of them because nobody is, but he sets a high bar. He set my sister and I up to be constantly disappointed by men (shh, don't tell Kyle) because everything he does is to improve the lives of the people he loves. The one thing he does for himself is a short fishing trip with old friends every summer. Otherwise he is always working, improving the house, making the yard look beautiful, driving to Lincoln to do things for my grandparents since my grandpa can't and they're too stubborn to move.

I called him to wish him a Happy Father's Day today and I certainly made no big speech. I probably should sometime, maybe next year. But for now, I love you, Dad.