Dads

Sometimes I think Dads don't get enough credit. (Yeah, I'm a Dad).

But that doesn't make me a deadbeat. An absentee. A weekend Dad. All not very nice, but well publicized. It makes good headlines, I guess. And there's a difference between being a Dad and being a Father. Anyone can be a Father. Not everyone is a Dad.

I listened to a friend today talk about his Dad. In front of a packed house. He talked about the one theme that keeps popping up in my blog. Time. The one thing we can't get enough of. That we can't change––OK, daylight savings excluded––no matter how many things we do to our body. He talked about spending time with his Dad. He talked about the time he's going to miss. He talked about a good Dad. He was probably a great Dad.

I think we sometimes forget Dads are human. Just like Moms. I've always believed that you're really an adult when you realize your parents are human. They make mistakes. They don't know everything. They have fun. (I'll leave it at that. I can hear Kaity ringing the therapy cash register). And we Dads do screw up all the time. We don't have an instruction book. Not that we would read it, anyway. So we're making most of this shit up as we go along. Then we learn what works and doesn't work and go from there. Some scary stuff, huh?

But that's OK. Because we Dads come in all sizes, colors, shapes, price ranges and geographic regions. And we are tough. My Dad has had more close encounters of the death kind than any human should have. From heart attacks to cancer. So every time I talk to him, I want to make sure it's a good one. Good Dads are hard to come by.

So they say.