74

Me and Dad, 2008ish

Today my dad is 74 years old.  You see that shit eating grin on his face up there?  He was cracking up while I was demonstrating Phone Booth on my then brand new Macbook.  That's exactly the expression he gets on his face whenever something is totally cool but also totally fun.  He smiles like that at my kids sometimes.  Other times we see it when someone wins something or whenever something happens really great.  And sometimes we see it when we're walking up the driveway and he's standing in the doorway saying hello. 


It doesn't escape me that our family is mightily blessed to have the parents we have.  People meet my folks and usually the next words out of their mouths go something like, "You have great fricking parents."   What I say to my kids though is usually something like, "These are not the people who raised me!" 

But that's just it.  These are the people who raised me.  These are miraculously the same people who refused certain skirt lengths, had strict curfews, used the word "no" a lot, had a set dinner time that included rules and expectations about what dinner should be and that ice cream was not in fact a good choice.  These are the same people who gave a firm re-buff when I wanted to dye my hair pink or wear high heels before my sixteenth birthday. 

These are the same people who see my daughters doing all of the above and tell me , "What's the big deal?  Its just hair! She looks great!" 

What really gets me though is that somehow, even with a 360 degree turnaround, they're still right after all these years.