A Man's Legacy: An Open Note to My Father and My Son

November happens to be the birth month of the favorite two men in my life: My dad and my son.  My birthday lands smack in the middle of theirs, ten days after my sons and 9 before my dads. This is an interesting parallel to me, since I try to parent Z (my son) that way. What I mean is this: he's 7 now. My dad is in his 60's.  I see Z as the man in the making now, and I see my father as the goal line. I am simply the person in between the two, trying to make it happen. I see myself as a conduit for my father's legacy.



It is easy for me to carry on my mom's legacy with my daughter and son, but it's an every day struggle to raise a man as a single mom and to instill good qualities. Especially since he's so much like me in the best ways: he's a wild nature lover, he's in love with simple things and always stops to smell the roses, he's impulsive and passionate, he is kind.  And he's like me in the not so great ways: he's impulsive and passionate, he's stubborn as you can get, he's kind to a fault, he's hardheaded and cannot be convinced to do it any other way. But I know every day that it would be so much harder to raise a man if I didn't have such a good role model to base it on.

And lucky for me, I do have the best role model you can find. My son idolizes my father, as I did when I was younger and still do. When Z talks about getting bigger, he almost always follows the statement with "like Pop-Pop".  This makes me ridiculously happy, because I know he sees many things worth emulating in my father including patience, kindness, humor and unabashed love and affection for his loved ones.

Now of course, as a daddy's girl,  dating has been an adventure. I didn't marry someone like my dad. Oddly, none of the three sisters married a man remotely similar to my dad. I find this crazy and don't really have an excuse for it. Perhaps it was....maybe it was...I was drugged? Hmmm, no. I've got nothing. Except for that hardheadedness I referred to earlier. Two out of three of us are divorced, clearly we recognized the error.  I suppose that I could give up on finding someone with the traits that I think are the best about my dad, but I find that's what I did when I got married. I thought that they weren't really THAT important.  But then I asked myself this question:  Who wouldn't want a man who is honest, hard working, loyal, loving and diverse?  Who loves his wife, loves life and is never bored because he's out and about and trying something new? That's a man I could hang out with.

So today, on my dad's birthday, I want to say this. THANK YOU, DAD. For being a wonderful example of a man, husband, father and brother. Thank you for giving me faith that quality people exist and it's worth the effort to find them, that kindness and love don't have a boundary or expiration date (or else I would've used it up in my teenage years) and that I can raise my son to be like his hero. Because unlike his plastic superheros with tights on and shields, sometimes his real life hero shows up in denim shirts with mother of pearl snaps, Wrangler jeans, work boots and answers to "Pop-Pop".