fathers, be good to your daughters.*

[enamoured]

I simultaneously take my dad for granted and realize that I'm insanely lucky to have him around. And although I hope that he'll never see this, I feel like I should kind of mention a few awesome things about him:

My mom went back to work once I was in kindergarten and my brother started preschool. She's a nurse, and her hours have always been erratic because of that, but it was especially crazy when she was on the floor and was on call. So my dad was the one who made dinner for us and made sure that we went to bed on time and everything, because my mom wasn't home until late at night and we'd only see her during the mornings.

My dad taught me "Yellow Submarine" by The Beatles when I was about six. He also taught me how to whistle and always encouraged me in my pursuits, whether it was ballet or soccer or Girl Scouts. He has never said that I needed to do this or that to succeed, but he's only ever told me to follow what I've thought was right. He worked from home and took care of me when I got the flu in third grade, and then he got it too. He went with me to DC on a trip with Girl Scouts and he encouraged me whenever I decided I wanted to learn HTML and make a web site. Hell, he taught me how to use our first computer (a Commodore 64), and he gave me diskettes whenever I told him I wanted to write a book and taught me how to use the word processing program on one of our later computers. I'm pretty sure that the part of me that likes sci-fi and superheroes is due to his influence.

I don't always agree with him, and our views on things from reality TV and how to make spaghetti and theology differ sometimes, but he's always been there and he's always been on my side, and I appreciate him for that so, so much. I love my occasionally hopelessly geeky dad.

*: I AM SO SORRY OKAY.

Comments

[queenthesixth.livejournal.com]

That's so lovely. I'm glad you have a great father. My dad was one of the good ones too but he died sixteen years ago, so it always makes me happy to hear that there are other good fathers out there especially as all we ever seem to hear about on the news are the bad ones.