Dad

   Here is one of the pies my dad has made me on my birthday...Looks like it has a good twenty seven candles on it that I got to blow out. My dad...making me a birthday pie WITH my name AND candles... and I'm turning twenty seven on this pie...not ten, not fourteen..twenty seven years old!!
   When I was little I thought my dad was pretty horrible. That is just the brutal truth. He yelled a lot. No children like yelling. Now as an adult when I look back I HOPE that I FULLY realize just how amazing my dad really was. He worked at a job that was very stressful for him every single moment. He worked in maximum security prisons for most of my life. However because he had five children and this job had good benefits he did the job. It was shift work to boot and he had to get up before the sun rose and when he came home he was so tired he usually couldn't do much. Yet he had five children that really wanted his attention! Not a really great combo. My dad worked so incredibly hard. He was also someone who had impeccable work ethic in whatever he did. He never ever slacked off. He was good natured and kind at work also.
   We went through a time where we lived on a farm and he worked the land. He grew the purest produce possible and installed acres of fence by himself...pounding fence posts, clearing broom trees...by hand.  All through growing up though I focused on the negative things that I knew to be true at that time. I knew he was angry a lot, I knew he yelled and that we were scared around him. It created me a lot of bitterness in me.       However I remember this one time he cried. My mom was gone at the time and had taken the other children. I was there and someone was over talking to him and he was crying that gut wrenching cry when all is lost. In that moment I realized he was human. Do you know what I mean? Where you realize they are not just your parents? That they have feelings and a name and that they haven't always been 'old?' Well I remember that moment particularly. It was one of the most heart breaking things I have every heard. My parents were going through a particularly horrific time in life then. Us kids didn't get it at all and how could we?
   As life has gone on and I have had the chance to come into adult hood and look back....I have also had the privilege to see truth and to forgive, and move on. I have come to realize how incredibly hard my parents had it ~ in every sense of the word. Being an adult is so dang hard. You just want to do well. You want to make good choices, you want to be kind and giving, you want to be impactful and faithful and you want to love your children well...however sometimes it just isn't that easy.
   Sometimes as we grow up we never fully recognize our parents as human. We always look at them from child's eyes. It is liberating and completely incredible to find our grown up eyes. We can then look on the past with empathy and maturity. Something I have realized is that my dad was always there for me. Maybe he couldn't be there in ways I thought I needed him back then. However my dad worked as hard as he could every single day so that I could eat, so I could have quality education, so that I could have warm clothes. When he couldn't do that he accepted charity so that we would be okay. My dad wanted to be a better father then he was able to be. He sought help but it didn't come in a way he could utilize it. He did all he could.
  My dad is a gem. When I was a teenager and I was not making the wisest choices he knew best and he told me truth. When I got married he gave me away with pride because he was a huge reason I was marrying someone so amazing. When I got sick with cancer he took my husband and I in when we could not afford to pay rent. So many times over the years he has given anything we needed. If we were hungry he would make us a meal, if we didn't have money and he did he'd give us some, and every Christmas he makes a dinner and every Thanksgiving. Words that I can now use to describe my dad are hard working, selfless and kind, giving and empathetic and there are many more. We named our youngest son after him and I already see characteristics from my dad in my son.
   I am so grateful that he never left. That he kept working through the hell his life was. That he was my father and that he is my father. Whenever I have a cooking question I call him. When I don't want to make something for dinner I ask him to and he does. If I need something and I don't know where to turn I call dad. I am so thankful for all the birthday pies, for all the soup, for all the cooked roasts, for the fresh bread, for the Dairy Queen dipped cones, for all the times and ways he has been a really wonderful father to me.   When I think back on the past now ~ much of it ~ dare I say all of it ~ has lost its sting. I am able to see with the eyes of an adult and forgive.