Thursday, January 21, 2016

Happy Birthday Daddy



The family that I was born into is a hearty, humble Pennsylvania-Dutch, Protestant people as opposed to the first-generation Mexican-Catholic, if-you-ain't-flying-by-the-seat-of-your-pants-you-ain't-really-living kinda family brouhaha I converted and married into, and to a large extent have come to overwhelm my family's presence. It happens; the squeaky wheel gets the oil and the quiet one keeps rolling along putting in the miles and carrying the load.

There is a humility and piousness that comes from "my" people--ever been to Amish country. Yeah, there you have it. We are law-abiding; tax paying; ears pinned back; never ask for help; assholes and elbows; never let'em see you sweat; never drunk driving; in by 10pm kinda people. 

We do not wail nor lament; we get ulcers and have irritable bowels. And we never ever call undue attention to ourselves or our family name. So, personal blogs where one family member ::two thumbs up pointing at my big 'ol head:: dishes on a whole bunch of personal crap, spills the beans about her less-than-picture-perfect life and complains A LOT on a wide variety of subjects on the world wide web is in clear violation of two of the more-than-most basic of all the basic family tenets: privacy and modesty.

Anyhoo, with all that being said, and without further embarrassment or immodesty to my family, I will simply say, Happy Birthday, Daddy. I love you for a whole bunch of reasons and these are my top-10 in descending order 'cause I cannot for the life of me figure out how to reverse the numbered bullet point numbers.

Thank you most of all:
  1. For never letting me just "have" anything, but for giving me everything I ever needed to be a success.
  2. For never letting me twist in the wind.
  3. For never spanking, hitting or raising your hand to me. In the end, this more than anything helped me to say, "No more!" and to become the woman I am today.
  4. For allowing me a place to come home to when I had no home.
  5. For secretly hanging the moon just for me.
  6. For looking most like you, when everyone thinks I look most like Momma.
  7. For going to Father's Night at the Hero's pre-school and accepting his childish Father's Day trinkets.
  8. For instilling in me your puritan work ethic that helped me to find the man with the same work ethic who would help me raise my son to require that same work ethic of himself. 
  9. For never letting me feel that when you and Momma had two girls that that was anything less than having the six boys that I know you thought you really wanted.
  10. For walking me down the aisle twice but for never really once letting go and giving me away.

xoxo Darya