I spent this last Saturday with my dad taking care of a boat at his place. My dad is currently facing some serious health problems that not only case me a great deal of concern but have caused me some serious reflection about my life with my dad. My dad is not the man who provided the genetic material that brought me into mortality. My dad is not the man who after creating my life avoided any financial, emotional, physical or any other kind of responsibility for the rest of my life. He is not the man who made contact with me one time from the time I was 18 months old until I was 25 years old and has not contacted me since. My dad is a man I didn’t meet until I was 5 years old. My dad is the guy who took a job at the saw mill pulling boards with the Navajos to give me a place to live and food to eat. He is the guy who took my brother and me fishing and we slept in the back of the station wagon while according to my mom he and she almost froze to death as they slept in a tent. He is the guy who filled my youth with memories of hunting, fishing, and camping trips as well as great family vacations. My dad is the guy who bought my first pocket knife for my birthday and then ran me to the hospital to get stiches in my thumb after I sliced it open. He is the guy that when he finally got a decent job spent all his free time building a house with his own hands for our family to live in. He is the guy who used that opportunity to teach me how to work and take pride in the home we were building together. It was several years later that I realized he really didn’t need those piles of bricks moved from one location to another on our lot but he knew I needed the experience. He is the guy who taught me how to drive and then paid for the muffler I rolled up under his car when I was racing his car on a dirt road and went over a wooden bridge too fast. He is the man who cosigned with me for an old Willies Jeep and then paid for the tow truck to pull it out when I tipped it up against the fence at the tennis courts and when I broke it through the ice in the bottom of Kanab Creek. When as a teenager I became a complete jerk and did everything he taught me not to do, he was the man who was weeping and praying with my mother that somehow I would figure life out. In spite of how difficult and unkind I was as a teenager he was the man who never once missed an athletic event or any other activity I was ever involved in. When I joined the army, although I couldn’t say a civil word to him at the time and often reminded him he wasn’t really my dad, he was the guy that gave me insight from his days in Korea into what the military experience would be like for me. When I finally figured life out and I went to Venezuela on a mission my dad was the man who after working for the power company all day took a second job at night at the local theater to help pay for a mission I was not prepared to pay for. When I married and had a family my dad was the guy who was there for my wife and children as he had always been there for me. He was the guy who always treated them as if they were his own. My dad was the man who when I was twelve years old took full legal and financial responsibility for me and legally gave me his last name by adopting me. He was the man who knelt across the alter from my mother in the temple and invited me to be a part of his family for eternity, an act that I believe was contemplated before the world was created. Last year when my mother died my dad was the man who was there weeping with me and telling me how grateful he was to God for allowing me to be a part of his life. When I was supposed to conduct and speak at my mother’s funeral and realized a short time before the funeral that I didn’t have the strength do what I was being asked to do, my dad was the man who laid his hands on my head and with the power of the priesthood he held gave me strength that I did not possess on my own. My dad may not have been my father genetically but he was my dad by choice. As a young boy I felt great pride when my dad adopted me and I was able to use his name and I feel even more pride now over 40 years later. I have often heard those who have been adopted say they want to find their real parents. I cannot contemplate a more real parent than my dad. DNA does not make a father, every day of life, the trials, the struggles; the love and the joy that are shared make a Father. I just wish in so many ways especially when I was younger I would have been more like he is.
Posted on: Wed, 18 Sep 2013 01:31:14 +0000
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