Today is my father's birthday. Born in Harlem, Montana, November 4th, 1924. He would have turned ninety-four. Since I was eight when he passed, I remember a dad, but not the man. I know he liked to drive Buicks and he was one of the most accurate shooters in the country.
I know he loved his family. I know he and mom adopted three kids. I know he was in the process of building a house--a structure well ahead of its time--when he died, leaving the home unfinished, leaving also his family "unfinished." He never got the opportunity to take his sons hunting. He never took us to see the places where he grew up in the Great Depression, nor did he ever tell us the stories of joining the Army in WWII, being a soldier in Europe, or what it felt like to be a tail gunner in a B-17.
No, sadly, I don't know the man. As a child I missed my dad. I still do. But as a father myself, I miss the man. If he were still with us, and that's a huge "if" considering he'd be only years away from hitting the century mark, I hope I'd be going to him for advice. I hope he'd love my kids--his grandkids--as much as we do and could help them understand the beauty and the ugliness of this world and the people in it.
But that's not how things turned out. I've lived forty-four years without him, an entire life. My children have lived their entire lives with me as a their father, something, because of my experiences, I've thought about often.
Happy birthday, Dad! I only had a few years with you. I hope to one day to get to know everything there is to know not only about the father, but also the man.
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