OH DADDY!

I realize that the actual day of Father's Day has passed but I was inspired by Laura aka Mulligan's post about her father on her blog to write something about my dad. You've all met my mom but my dad is not a blogger, nor does he really get the "blogging thing" and would never read my blog anyway, THE MAN'S BUSY! (Besides, I don't know if I want my dad knowing all the shit I blog about) That being said, who knows? Maybe I'll print this out and send it to him so he knows how much I love him.

My dad is a man of VERY few words. He is not an "I love you" dad. He is not a "come sit in my lap" dad. He is not a "let's have a long phone conversation" dad. For many years I thought my dad just didn't love me as much as my mom did. That's a sad thing to admit, but it's true. Until recently. I read the book The 5 Love Languages. This book refers to "your mate" in the title but he addresses in the book that it can be used to reference ANY person that you love; and I LOVE my dad. I found out from this book that my dad's love language is "Acts of Service". This means that my dad shows his love by helping out around the house, making time to help you fix your car or computer or shower handle as it were. I can remember when I was in High School, my dad was in night school to get his bachelor's in Mechanical Engineering. He would spend a couple hours a night helping me and my brother and sister with homework and then after we'd go to bed he'd sit down and do his homework. I know there are lots of dads that probably wouldn't of had time for their kids homework and that shows me that my dad loves me. My dad works hard at a job that he doesn't love, because he had to support a family and because he wants nice things and a good future for he and my mom and eventually their grandkids. My dad not only loves but is very gifted, extremely gifted, at designing and building theatrical sets. He can always come up with a unique idea and his engineering education helps in creative problem solving for specific effects or specialized set pieces. He gets called by almost all of the community theatres in the area he lives in to design and build special pieces for them. My dad works hard at a job he doesn't love so he can have the money and time to spend on designing and building these sets for theatre companies. I love him for that, because if it were me, I'd say "screw it" and move somewhere and make a living out of the theatre (which is what I'm doing someday). But my dad knows my mom is happy where she is and he's happy where he is so he makes do with a job that provides but he doesn't love so he can hang out with my mom, do some Ebay, design some sets and drink diet pepsi.

I Love You Dad.