[My apologies for the re-post. You may see this in duplicate. Evidently, I'm a complete knob and wrote over a previous post, so now I have to scour the memory banks and re-write the other one unless I can find a way to bring it back from the nether world of my idiocy. ugh...]

[This is a belated Father's Day post and I give you a little humor before launching into a more serious post.]

I’ve been thinking about this post for awhile. I usually struggle with Father’s Day. I’ve held a contentious relationship with my dad throughout the years. We’ve always been at odds at a fundamental level: socially, politically, even economically. I think the only thing we ever agreed on was on a spiritual level. Even my memories of him strike discord within myself.

I have fond early memories of our time on the baseball field with him pitching batting practice. However, even then I remember wanting to hit the ball as hard as I could right back at him. Very much a love/hate relationship.

It’s not without good reason that my feelings towards my father are ambivalent. Our family life experienced many ups and downs because of him and his side of the family. My mother suffered the brunt of it and my sister and I were caught in the crossfire.

Despite all of our family turmoil, I never felt my dad was a bad person. He was beholden to an angry legacy left by my grandfather and he just wasn’t good at being a father and husband. He had a tremendously generous heart and a wicked sense of humor. These are probably the best traits I inherited from him. I also inherited his penchant for being an entrepreneur. I still haven’t decided if that’s a good thing. It was his entrepreneurial spirit which kept him away from the family much of the time. My own early relationships have been plagued by this very family trait within myself. I suppose at times my reflection reminds myself too much of him and I have to quell my fears that I will follow too closely in his footsteps. A lifelong struggle to say the least.

At the sametime, I do feel that I’ve been able to learn quintessential life lessons from him. Ironically, in ways of how not to be a man. I also wouldn’t be the person I am without the family struggles my sister and I endured.

I do thank him for his part in giving me life and for the happy memories I do have of him. I know that my father has done the best he can and that he continues to try and reestablish some form of his self glory. I wish him the best and that perhaps someday we can find alignment.