Smiling Mom

So today is my dad’s birthday.

57.

Yikes.

He’s gray now, and bla­mes my tee­nage years for this sud­den onset gray­ness that somehow hap­pe­ned right about the same time I got my first boy­friend and went off to college.

Wha­te­ver, it couldn’t have pos­sibly been all my fault!

I was an angel.

Per­fect.

Ahem.

My dad doesn’t have a sense of humor, at all!

(My dad, gues­sing eClaire’s gender)

Well, maybe a little bit.

He’s a fan­tas­tic photographer.

(eClaire in the same dress my mom and I wore at the same age)

(BC on his second birthday)

(A pic­ture of me last Christmas)

(Uncle J with the kids)

My dad is about the best grandpa a kid could have. He takes time every sin­gle day to talk with my kids. He video con­fe­ren­ces with them through our com­pu­ters and watches as they dance around the house in their goofy ways.

I can mail one of BC’s scrib­ble dra­wings down to San Diego and and my dad treats it like it’s the best art­work he’s ever seen.

He’s everything you could ever hope for in a grandpa.

My kids love him more than just about anything in the world!

My dad often says that I’m quite stub­born. That I’m a bit pig hea­ded and quite strong-willed.

Need­less to say, we weren’t all that close throughout my tee­nage years.

Funny because I get these stubborn-like traits from my dad. Every. sin­gle. one. of. them.

It’s true.

You would think that he would have ‘got’ me a bit bet­ter than he did when I was a teen.

But now that I’m an adult he fre­quently tells sto­ries, to anyone who will lis­ten, about those days. He tells about how I crea­ted a power-point pre­sen­ta­tion of sorts when I was 12 (with a flip chart et. al) and lots of pic­tu­res and dia­grams and direc­tions on how to pro­perly wash a dish. Then I called a mee­ting and pre­sen­ted it to the family.

Or about the time I ran over lightly tap­ped the neigh­borhood boy’s butt with my Toyota truck when I was 16 because he stuck it out at me in the middle of our cul­de­sac and wouldn’t move.

And dare I say, that I usually detect a hit of pride in his voice as he tells each story?

I eat it up! My dad is almost per­fect in my eyes and he has a huge impact on the way I choose to live my life.

He is a great man.

I guess I feel as lucky, if not more, than my kids. My dad loves me more than anything in the world. Until recently I never really unders­tood this type of love. And then Hubby and I had our own daughter.

Now Hubby’s eyes light up and heart melts with just a bat of eClaire’s eyes.

It’s only now that I rea­lize I had, and will always have, the same effect on my dad too.

This is something I will never take for granted.

A dad’s love.

How lucky am I?

Happy Birth­day Dad!

57 and still kickin’

Not Bad!! You may make it to a ripe old age yet!!