I am my parents’ first child. I’m also the only girl. Several hours after I was born, my father went out and bought me my first dress. It fit me several months later. My mother still has that dress.

My father is a teacher. From the time I can remember, he has been teaching me without me even knowing it. He taught me how to appreciate music. He taught me how to fish and how to do a cartwheel. How to make ice cream. How to change my oil, how to drive a standard, how to build things. He taught me the right way to wash and wax a car so it was shiny. He taught me how to throw, catch, and hit a baseball. He tried to teach me how to play soccer, but I was more interested in picking flowers in the field or watching the butterflies go by. He tried really hard to teach me advanced math techniques….he really did try on that, although I was not the best student on that topic. Each and every day he and my mother taught my brothers and me skills we needed to become reasonably productive members of society.

image of man holding his newborn baby and feeding her a bottle in 1976

Out of everything he taught me, there are two things that stand out the most. The first is that he taught me to be myself and never be afraid or ashamed to be that person. He supported my distracted, all over the place daydreaming personality. He bought rocks from my rock selling stand and water when I sold water at my water stand at the end of my driveway. He never made me feel bad for any of the harebrained ideas I had; rather, he was always very supportive of them, even if he did know that me transplanting woodland plants into the gravel of the driveway would surely kill them. He supported me and let me learn. The other thing he did was teach me how I should be treated. My father was the first man I ever loved. He quietly showed me, in his treatment of my mother, and of me, how I should expect to be treated by a significant other. It took me a long, long time to learn that most important lesson, but I did.

Thanks, Daddy, and Happy Father’s Day.