Father's Day

I wonder how many blogs have that topic today? I am a father of almost two years. My son's birthday is July 5th. But Father's Day always makes me think of my father and what he meant to me. He, without a doubt, has had the most influence on the person that I am today.

Originally in this post I started to give you some background details about my dad. Where he was born, how poor he was growing up, etc. But I deleted that lengthy paragraph. I'm not writing this post to tell you the history of my father. My intent is just to share two stories about him with you.

First story:

My dad was Santa Claus. Not only did he look like Santa Claus (yes, that's him in the pictures), and play Santa Claus at the mall and other places, he was Santa in his heart. For evidence, read the following story. My mother often played "Mrs. Claus" to his Santa. Especially at the mall, where it required a little more organization.

One day, a little girl got on my dad's lap. He asked the standard questions of her.

"Have you been a good girl?" and "What would you like for Christmas?"

I never heard what her answer to the first question was, but her answer to the second was, "Glasses, so I can read better."

My dad held it together and finished his "Santa time" with the little girl. After she got down and went back to her mother and they left, my dad called my mother over. He explained to her what had happened and told her, "Go buy that little girl some glasses!"

My mom caught up with the mother, pulled her aside and did in fact buy the little girl some glasses. I don't know the story of why the mother couldn't afford the glasses. You can fill in the blanks yourself with whatever back story you want. The point to me was the instant compassion my father felt, and the instant action he took.

Second story:

When I was young, we lived very close to a busy highway. Consequently, I lost my first couple of dogs to the high speed traffic.

When I was about seven, a Boston Terrier wandered up to our house. He was the cutest little dog you had ever seen. My parents explained that he was someone's dog and that we had to try to find his home.

We did our due diligence and put up signs near our house and contacted the local vet (which also acted as the animal shelter). I think we even put an ad in the paper. After a few weeks, we gave up looking and my parent's declared him our dog. I had named him Buster. I used to feed him hot dogs and cheese from the frig.

About this same time, my father had a '68 Ford (remember, this was 1976, so it wasn't that old then) parked by the road for sale. A gentleman stopped to look at the car. Buster came around the corner of the house. The man took one look at him and said, "That's my dog." Sure enough, he called Buster by name his original name and it was obvious the dog knew him. He only lived a few miles down the road from us, but for whatever reason hadn't seen any of our attempts to find him.

Needless to say, the man was very excited to get his dog back. My dad told him how attached I was to the dog (by this time it had been a couple of months).

The guy replied, "I understand and I'm sorry, but he's my dog."

So then my dad did something that I still think about all the time.

"If I give you the car, will you let my son keep the dog?"

My dad gave the man the car. Now, I don't know how much the car was worth, or how bad we did or did not need the money. It doesn't matter. What does matter is my dad's heart in the situation. It took him 3 seconds to decide that my happiness was more important to him than selling the car and making some money.

Now the worst and best parts of the story. The worst part is that my father died in a car accident on December 1st, 1999. The best part? My mother told me this story after he passed away.

Dad never mentioned this to me. Twenty-three years, and he never said, "You know what I did for you?"

That's selfless love. He wasn't doing it for me so that I would think he was great or so he would have some leverage to use against me in the future. He did it because he loved me.

He wasn't perfect. He made plenty of mistakes as a dad. I, of course, swore I wouldn't make the same mistakes with my children. I'm sure I have and will.

But I hope I can one day be a father (and a man) like him.