This Guy

This Guy is 52 today! He's the best dad that I could ever ask for. And after this fall my faith in that statement has been renewed. I've never seen my dad cry, ever in my life but when I was going through a hard time this fall deciding what to do and before I got diagnosed with depression but new that I needed to be on meds for it I had this quiet conversation just the two of us. It was before my mom got home and we were talking basically about how I thought that neither him nor my mom were proud of me and that's when I saw my dad cry for the first time in my life. It was only a few tears but, that's also when I finally knew with every ounce of my being that they truly were proud of me and that it was okay that I was taking a semester off of school to figure life out. Also, that it was okay that I wasn't going to a four year school like both of my siblings.



This summer when I was working two jobs and 70 hours a week I rarely got to see anyone besides him. I worked at least 40 hours a week with him and it's something that I truly cherished. As much as I hated getting up before the crack of dawn at 4:00-4:30am (so not a morning person) I loved the rides to/from work and getting to eat lunch with him. I loved getting to know the people he would come home and talk about and even becoming "friends" with some of them. I have some really good/funny memories with some of those people. We also had a mutual love of poking fun at Bailey.(One of my co-workers)

What I really loved most though was on the rare night that I was home and mom would ask "what did you do today" I could answer for him(not that he needed me to.)

Most of all though, I loved the day we went to the bakery. Yes it sounds odd, but when my brother use to work with him they went to the bakery more than once and when I found out I was officially working with dad this summer that's all I wanted to do, have that wonderful moment of anticipation, being able to pick out a donut from the bakery at 4 in the morning.

So, Happy Birthday Dad! I hope it was great and although you may never read this, I couldn't imagine my life without you, or imagine me with any other father.