Just a Dad

I know I posted this link yesterday, but I wanted to post it again just in case some of you didn’t actually click and read it: 🙂  HERE. I wanted to post it again, today, on Father’s Day, because I love the author’s perspective on love, and specifically on being a father to a special need’s child.  This paragraph stood out to me:

We can imagine dramas and turmoil. People make films about them. In our own minds, we often put together the most terrific stories about thrilling or devastating events that might befall us. But what no one can imagine is the day-to-day process of living with things and getting on with the humdrum job of loving. We can imagine only the beautiful and the terrible. We are drama queens, and our imaginations are incapable of giving us any help about coping from day to day. Marriage is not the same as falling in love; nor is it an endless succession of terrible rows and monumental reconciliations: it is about a million small things: things beyond our imagining.

The human imagination can do many extraordinary things. But we can’t imagine love. Or perhaps I mean loving: love as a continuous state; one that carries on in much the same way from day to day, changing and growing with time just as people do. The great stories of literature are about meeting and falling in love, about infidelity, about passion. They are seldom about the routines of married life and having children.

So forgive the Sacredness of the Mundane enthusiast in me, but this is so true.  What I love about this article is this author’s perspective: His entire point is that he wants no sainthood, no applause, no canonization for what he views as a simply loving his son.  What’s so heroic about that?  I’m not a hero, he would say, just a Dad.

My own dad is the same way.  I am Bill Zyp’s daughter and there isn’t a man on earth I would rather have for a dad.  He, like the author of that article, seeks no applause or great recognition for simply doing what is natural for him–loving his family, loving his friends, giving of his time, resources, energy, for those around him.

I’ve never met a more giving man than my dad.  Truly open-handed with his finances, I was raised knowing that giving to the church and those in need was just what you did.  We had. We gave.

And he gave to me. Countless hours shooting free-throws, working on my left-handed lay-ups, doing ball-handling drills.  He loved me enough to teach me about working hard, letting me help him build decks and install pools (for slave wages!).  He taught me that being a woman doesn’t mean I can’t get dirty or carry heavy things.  Into my mid-20s I still would work with him occasionally, pulling my hair in a pony tail and trudging around in the mud installing a pool deck.  Sometimes we’d even get a lunch break…for 5 minutes.

He gave me his protection.  He let his intimidating presence be known to many a young man, keeping a number of would-be suiters at arm’s length. He loved me enough to scare many away. And in time, when Jeff came along, he loved me enough to give me away without reservation.

And he continues to give. Not only to Jeff and me, but to Dutch and Heidi.  A better grandfather I could never imagine.  He, as we all know, is Dutch’s favorite.  Papa is his hero.  Who else will spend countless hours on the floor playing trucks, giving rides in the old army jeep, digging around in the sand outside loading and unloading dump trucks?  Who else will read books until his voice is gone, sacrifice sleep by staying in Dutch’s room at night, share a glass of water with our 2 1/2 year old back-wash king?  Only Papa.  Who else will spend hours searching Craigslist for cheap deals on toy dump trucks and backhoes?  Who else will sit in our apartment and watch cars and trucks go by for hours, answering the continual stream of questions, “Oh what’s that truck?! Oh what’s that truck?!” Papa.

But, just as the author of that article, my dad would insist he’s nothing special.  He just thinks he does what any dad or Papa would do. He doesn’t understand that he is remarkable beyond words.  I say he is a hero in the truest sense.  I’m not a hero, he would say, just a Dad.