Sunday, June 19, 2005

Father's Day Special Edition

To all the fathers (be they birth fathers, adoptive fathers, foster fathers or father figures) in our lives, you get very little credit publicly for all that you have contributed to our lives. Instead, most of your accomplishments are classified as "things you are suppose to do." Yet so many are simply "sperm donors."

To those who grew up next to nothing, on the small farms of the Depression and post-Depression era, and worked every day of their lives since they were 5 years old.

To those who worked long hours, six days a week to offer your family material things you never had.

To those who coached the baseball teams, the softball teams, the football teams and all of the other activities your children were good at -- and not so good at.

To those who were the first in their families to even graduate from high school, yet grueled away at manual labor jobs to put every single one of your children through college.

To those who took care of their mothers, after their fathers died entirely too young, who visited them every single day in the nursing home when these women became too frail to live alone.

To those who looked cancer and other ailments in the face and laughed, who didn't pity themselves or ask, "Why me?" but instead mustered the courage to beat disease back into submission.

And to those who never bitched when no one praised them, because it was what "they are suppose to do."

Happy Father's Day.

Most of all, Happy Father's Day to the man who lived the above story.

My father.


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