Happy Father's Day

I was planning on uploading my picture to my blog today, but this whole Hello/Bloggerbot thing mystifies me. How do I get the picture into the edit profile part and not into the blog itself? They don't explain that to you.

Yesterday was Father's Day, and even though I'm now technically an orphan, I still try to remember my Dad and what a wonderful person he was.

My father was an older father. I was born when he was 49 and my mother 45. I'm not sure why they waited so long to have me, but my mother had 3 children from her previous marriage, and I think they both wanted to make sure the relationship was going to work out before they brought more kids into the equation. So, that made me my mother's youngest, and my father's only child. Is it any wonder that I was spoiled?

Daddy was a WWII veteran and he was very proud of that fact, even though he didn't talk much about the war. I didn't even know he'd fought in the Battle of the Bulge until after he died. He never talked about how difficult it had been to be part of a segregated army, or what it must have been like for him doing basic training in the South. He did mention that he could have become an officer, but he turned it down because he had no intention of making the army his career. I do know that he was one of the elite few that served in both Europe and Asia during the war.

After he passed away, I found photos that he'd taken in France during the war, that I treasure. Leave it to my dad to take pictures like a tourist in the middle of a war!

My father worked two jobs most of his life. Even after he retired from the Post Office, he took another job as a security guard at Bergdorf Goodman. I feel like such a slacker since I only have one job. He and I were alot alike, both stubborn, we even looked alike, the same dark hair, brown eyes, and slight build. He was often caught between my mother, me and my grandmother, and I often saw him sitting amused as he listened to us argue.

He wanted me to go to Harvard, Yale, or another Ivy League school, but he didn't complain when I went to Syracuse instead. When he came to visit me at school freshman year, he impressed everyone. My friend Gwenne even made the comment that my father was a fox! Not bad for a guy pushing seventy at the time!

My dad wasn't much for travel. Although my grandparents took my uncle and my dad on a trip to Barbados to visit relatives, my father considered his traveling days over once he came back from the war. He was content to sit on the front lawn at our house upstate, reading a book, or hanging out with his friends at the VWF club house. I think we only took two trips as a family, once to Montreal for the Expo, and again to Salem when I was in high school. He never quite understood my wanderlust, but he let me travel to England by myself when I was sixteen to spend the summer (although I had to pay for it out of my savings!).

He didn't always understand me or what made me tick, but he was always proud of me. He emblazoned my name on pencils, even a case of the worst wine in the history of wine making.

Although I know that he's in a better place with my mother, I still miss him. It's been 5 years since he passed away, but sometimes it feels as if it were yesterday.

Happy Father's Day, Daddy! I miss you!