My dad was a dairy farmer. While I ended up in IT, a field he knew nothing about, he supported me the entire way. He did not understand my field of interest beyond the fact it was something I was interested in.
On the flip side, everything I know about machinery maintenance and repair I have from him. In my current field (an odd mix of It, industrial robotics and heavy machinery… On ships), this background works well, as it gives me the diverse background needed for such a diverse work place.
I don’t think there are anyone else in the company who can do VLAN and LACP trunks AND troubleshoot misbehaving hydraulics.
I think farm life and the military have put me in much the same situation.
He taught me that relationships only work when everyone is getting out of the relationship what they need. Not just romantic, either. It’s been an important lesson that’s stuck with me my whole life, it still reminds me to be attentive to other people’s needs and not just hide in my own head.
My dad did so much right, but his one failing was financial. He was an insurance salesman and had plenty of money when I was very young, but at some point it all dried up and he seemed unable to make more. He didn’t starve or anything, but at a certain point my brother had to step in and buy his house or he was going to lose it.
So now, I’m very cognizant of my spending and always having a good cash reserve.
But, he was also extremely generous when he did have money. His favorite way to spend money was on the people he loved and to make them happy.
So now, I also give freely. If it makes someone I love happy, and I can afford it, I’ll give them whatever I think might make them smile, if even for a day
I came out to him over christmas 2 years ago and that’s the last time he’s spoken to me. His last words to me before he read my letter were “Love you always”
I’ll be your dad, if you want. 🫂
My dad, my brother(13) and I (16) were on a resort scuba dive (we borrow their gear, and get a ride on their boat, and follow their leader during the dive). Descending down a line, with my dad following the dive lead, then me, then my brother.
About 60 feet deep, I see my dad jerk suddenly, followed by a bunch of bubbles. I see him grab his octopus… Another spasm and more bubbles.
I watch as he swims down to the dive leader, and grabs his octopus, taking in and releasing a breath. He signals to dive lead he needs to surface. Dive lead grabs his octopus and replaced it with my dad’s original regulator… Another spasm, and he begins emergency surfacing. My brother and I follow. Dive lead has a Merry dive all alone.
At the surface, we find that the rubber bits on my dad’s equipment (regulator, and octopus) had deteriorated, and broken at depth. He had lungs full of water, and spent the next half hour barfing and coughing it up.
That’s about all I got, still brings me to tears twenty some odd years later to just think about it
I hope you all sued the resort.
That negligence nearly cost your dad his life.
It was in Mexico. No dice 😑. That being said, we didn’t have to pay for any of the dives, and they offered to buy dinner for him. He was ill for a day or two, so we didn’t get to exercise it
I had to look up what “octopus” means in terms of diving equipment to alleviate myself of a mental image of each of you diving with a little sea creature friend snuggled up on you, which for some reason you’d grab if distressed.
That would be nice, maybe this would work? Blavingad
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I was a loser who didn’t seek a real job until I was 25, and didn’t get my shit together and move out until I was 30, but despite all that my dad always loved me and never so much as pushed me. Gentle encouragement from time to time, but always just glad to have his boy around. I live in a different country with my wife now. I have a beautiful daughter and a decent, stable job. We flew my dad out a few years ago and I’ve never seen him so proud of what I’ve become. He loved my daughter so much. We took him out to the Canadian Rockies. That trip meant the world to him.
He had a heart attack and died two years ago.
As tragic as it all is, I watched the emotional shit he went through over the way his father raised him, and his father’s suicide when I was too young to remember, and he made it a point to make sure I never had to wonder if he loved me or was proud of me. He was.
I hope his soul is flying through the universe somewhere and has seen how much my daughter has grown, and has seen my awesome new house. I sprinkle his ashes around my flower gardens every spring just to keep him around. I hope he’s around.
Love you, dad.
The only one I can think about are financial advises: 1. Do not ever spend more than you have and 2. Never sign something on the street or a the door.
Both have been very useful in life.
I don’t have many happy memories of my father growing up. All he knew his entire life was hard work and he leaned into that, because his dad died when he was eleven. I am grateful to him for a few things he did that made a major impact on my life:
- He and my mom got my eyes fixed when I was four years old, before which I was legally blind.
- He put the first $1000 I ever saw in my hand to pay a college tuition bill so I wouldn’t have to quit.
- He made sure I had everything I needed growing up in terms of material needs.
But there are a wealth of shitty memories too. He was drunk for most of my childhood and adolescence and verbally abusive. There were times he’d show up to my baseball or soccer practices and games and beer cans would be falling out of his truck. (Never had an adult intervene there, though.)
Most annoyingly, he and my mom have “borrowed” my car for a year to work for DoorDash. They’re too old now to get jobs anywhere else and have to survive.
The best thing I can say about him now is that I know he regrets all of it. On the rare occasions I have him over he always has a gift of some sort. It’s usually something small, because they’re very poor. Last time it was a container of oatmeal. It’s his way of saying sorry, because his stoic, 1940’s and 1950’s upbringing produced a man who doesn’t know how to actually say he’s sorry.
When he died, we all could finally breathe.
Unfortunately for mine, that stubborn son of a bitch is still hanging around into his 80’s, while the rest of his miserable family had the decent common courtesy to kick it in their 60’s & 70’s. I went no contact about a decade ago, but I still get to hear how much of a piece of shit he is from the rest of the family.
The only positive that came from him is that I turned out to be a better father than he did. I have a good relationship with my nearly adult kids.
I have so many stark lasting memories of my dad, good and bad it’s hard to pick the one with the greatest impact.
Maybe the time I watched him have an allergic reaction to an ssri that ended in 6 cops beating him unconscious and dragging him to jail.
Maybe the time he unprompted pulled $800 out of his wallet and handed it to the lady at the laundry mat who was stressed about paying her rent that month.
Maybe the time my friends and I showed up at 2am with bath salts and he did a little toot with us.
Maybe the time he sat with me in the kitchen until the wee hours of the night playing chess while I cried about being broken up with for the first time.
The day he left. Watched him pack up his shit and stood at the end of the driveway in tears watching him drive away. He moved out of state, rarely called, almost never visited. I was seven years old.
As a father, I could not dream of doing that. The only thing that piece of shit was good for was an example of what not to do. I love my kids so much, I cannot understand how much of a heartless fuck you’d have to be to just piss off like that. If you’ve ever done this to your kids, you are a good for nothing piece of shit.
Hope the flames are keeping you toasty you rotten bastard, I’ll be up here enjoying my own kids quite a lot!
When he threatened to break my legs for playing music too loud.
My dad wasn’t perfect, but he always did what was best for my mom and I. He worked his ass off doing a number of labor jobs (carpentry, mechanic, electrical, plumbing, etc) and was a jack of all trades. He dropped out his sophomore year in the 70s to help support his parents when his dad had a stroke and just kept working the labor jobs. He was well known enough in the plumbing business that when Disney was planning another hotel they asked for him by name to lead the plumbing project.
When all that hard labor caught up with him and he had his back surgery, it threw him on his ass and disability. He still kept working on stuff after recovering, rebuilt his uncle’s Willy’s he had found, swapping motors out of his truck when he eventually killed it, doing home renovations, everything. All while trying to teach my dumbass some of what he knew so I’d know something useful. I learned a lot from him, but not nearly all of what he knew. He was a stubborn hard ass so he liked things done a certain way and would sometimes get frustrated if I wasn’t doing it right, but never in a “I’m going to scream at you because you fucked up” kinda way.
It took me until he was diagnosed with cancer to realize why he had always been a hard ass and pushing me to do better, he didn’t want me to follow his footsteps and he stuck doing these hard labor jobs, destroying my body like he did his. Sorry that didn’t work out, old man.
It’s not really a particular memory of my dad that impacted me, it’s basically his whole memory of him that did. I’ve had lots of great memories with him, but everything he always did was for his family first, he was very selfless. I wouldn’t be who I am today without my dad.
Happy father’s day, dad. Miss you.
My son is my step-son and his biological dad has hispanic and black ancestry. My dad once told me that “It’s too bad he’s black” meaning that it’s too bad he’s black as his life will be more difficult for him and he won’t have as high of achievements due to this fact. Great, so you have just accepted that we have an unfair and imbalanced society yet continue to tell me that this country is too woke and everyone has an equal advantage and there is no such thing as racial injustice. No old man, you are a fucking racist piece of shit.
We haven’t spoken for 3 years.
