Man, these are all great stories. Thanks everyone for sharing!
Dad was very old-fashioned in many ways; his instructions had a way of sounding like they were being uttered by a burning bush. But he was always logical: his explanation on how to decide who had to open doors for whom was “whomever makes things easier for everybody involved”; whenever we opposed his orders with logic, he listened to it, he was open for discussion and, if the logic was good enough, would accept that we were right. Even when he was being I-logical, he was logical about it: “I know this isn’t logical, but since I don’t have any logical reason to do otherwise, I’ll follow my illogical reason”.
Every time I run into yet another father or supervisor whose logic is based on The Boss Is Right And I Am Boss, I think of Dad and thank him for having done his best to teach us how to think logically and for being amenable to logic - even when that logic came from someone 1/10th his age.
My parents got divorced when I was 11. My mom moved out, I stayed with my dad, but it was 50/50 joint custody - I spent half the week with my mom in the room she rented nearby or she slept over when my dad worked nights. It was perfectly reasonable - they didn’t want to disrupt my life any more than necessary. This was around 1984.
I found out as an adult that my mom had to FIGHT to get my dad “joint custody” on paper. Back then apparently the children automatically went with the mother. At the time my mom knew she was too ill to properly care for me. Apparently she was accused of “abandoning” me - um, no, she saw me for half the week. She said at the time: “Juicy is a “daddy’s girl”. I’m not going to take her away from her dad, her home, her cats, her school, her friends just because my marriage didn’t work out and have her hate me forever.”
So there she was - living in a rented room, dealing with a failed marriage, very little money, a resentful pre-teen daughter, being ignorantly judged, yet she still fought for what was best for ME.
My Dad quit his job for us.
When I was eleven he was a tobacco products salesman - had been since before I was born. He had a good career and was being promoted regularly.
He and my mother looked at all the cigarette samples in the garage and three girls (I was the oldest) hitting their teen years and said “its time to find a new career.” He moved back to Minnesota (we were living in Tobacco Country - which is where they put up and coming sales managers - close to corporate headquarters cause your next job will be there) and sold office supplies for the rest of his life - and they both quit smoking (though in times of stress my mother still bums a cigarette.)
Not a bad choice, as it turned out, since the tobacco industry was in a downward spiral in the U.S.
Like fuck shallow: he couldn’t be there physically, but he did what he could and didn’t turn your life into hell over being “his ex’s child”. Compare that with my cousins’ sperm donor and it’s like comparing apples and hemlock.
Absolutely. I just wished we lived in a world where what my dad did was the bare minimum that all non-custodial parents do. It seems shallow to be grateful that he met his legal obligations, y’know? Like, “Hey, you know what’s great about Pete? That guy’s never killed anyone! Seriously, way to go, Pete!” 
My mother is afraid of deep water. When I was born, she forced herself to learn to swim, just in case.
She was grew up a Jehovah’s Witness in a dysfunctional family, including physical abuse. She consciously broke the cycle of abuse and she did her best to break the dysfunction. She learned about Christmas and birthdays so that I could have those things that she never had as a child.
She fostered a loving relationship between me and her mother-in-law, whom she hated and who was mentally ill. She never left me alone with her before I was a teenager, but in such a way that I never realized it.
From the age of five, my father forced me to do a lot of menial labor (working in the family store every weekend) so I would appreciate the value of labor and also be motivated to stay in school. I hated it at the time, but damned if it didn’t work on both counts.
They both came from truly horrible families and did their best to make sure I had a decent, normal childhood. It didn’t quite work, but they did a lot better than anyone could have expected, and I sincerely appreciate the effort.
That’s a nice story.
When I was maybe 8 or 9 we were on vacation and met a Spanish family who invited us for dinner. Afterwards the man of the house got to showing off his camera and all its features.
My dad had a camera that he loved, and which he used all the time and which had a cool timer for family selfies (etc). On the way home after dinner I asked my dad why didn’t you show the senor your camera? His reply has stuck with ever since… he said, “it’s his house and his camera and we are his guests.” His point was loud and clear to me.
I can empathize, Sauron, I lost my dad unexpectedly about 5 months ago.
My dad lead a pretty normal life. Raised on a farm, his dad used him as labor as soon as he was old enough. That’s how small farms work, how the family survives. He played all manner of sports in high school, lettering in football (linebacker) and track (sprint and pole vault). I still have the newspaper clippings and photos showing him in action. He coached my baseball team and spent countless hours hitting grounders, playing catch and pitching to me. He made his living as a mechanic, often working 2 jobs when the family was young to make ends meet, and still found time to be a volunteer fireman. I remember family and friends often calling or stoppng by for with their cars, mowers, etc for dad to fix. He never turned them down and never charged for labor. While I don’t claim to be a mechanic, the knowledge he passed on to me has saved me thousands of dollars over the years. He could build anything and often machined his own tools so they better met his needs.
All perfectly normal and humdrum. Until I tell you that he was born with only one arm.
My natural father died when I was a baby, so I have always known my stepfather as Dad.
But he never legally adopted my brother and I, and when I finished high school and went into the Navy my parents separated. Mom went out West and Dad eventually sold the house and moved to New Jersey.
When I set foot on the pier after my discharge from the Navy I was lost, with nowhere to go: there was no longer any “home” left anywhere. Mom had made it clear she didn’t want anyone living with her, even her own son.
I have never forgotten that telephone call 26 years ago on the pier at Puget Sound, when Dad said “Come home, son.”
I drove from Washington to New Jersey and when I arrived he told me his friend had already set me up with a job at a good company down the street.
My dad owed me nothing: he was not my natural father and he never adopted me, but he treated me like the Prodigal Son.
The meaning of his actions has grown stronger in my mind over the years. I am certain he had no idea he was doing anything out of the ordinary: he was doing what a loving father does for his son. Whenever I might feel annoyed at something he has done or said (we all have our moments) I remember that phone call “Come home, son.”
Ten years ago Dad married his current wife. He asked me to be his best man. I felt honored. At first I struggled with what I would say for my official “Best Man Toast”, but then I relaxed: I told this same story (minus grumpy bits about Mom) to all of the guests that night. What good is it to see something good in a person without letting them know, publicly if appropriate?
minor That’s a beautiful story.
Doctor That’s amazing!
You know, it’s my cold, that’s it, why I’m sniffling so much.
I have two great parents, together for 61 years, and only once, while I was a child at home, did I ever hear them get into a shouting match, with yelling and hard words. It doesn’t matter what it was about, but listening to that from another room scared the crap out of me.
I’d heard them have mild disagreements, but never anything like that. They tried to set an example for us kids I think. I don’t remeber “little digs” or smartass comments about behaviour, appearance, or anything else.
I knew about kids whose parents weren’t like that, where the kids were always on edge about something. Thank God I never, except for just once, had to deal with that.
My father taught me to play chess. I realize now that he was not a particularly skilled chess player (like father, like son). I never even knew about castling until years later (he apparently didn’t know about it, either), nor about being able to exchange a pawn that reaches your opponents back row for another piece (ditto). Still, he taught me the basics.
And he never, ever let me win.
Oh, was I a sore loser! I threw fits. I cried. I yelled. But the next game, he’d beat me again. And the next. And the next.
Until one day he didn’t.
He made me work for it. He never gloated when he beat me. He never did or said a single thing to demean me or humiliate me. He just believed that you had to fail, and fail a lot if you were ever going to learn to do something properly.
I’m going to make sure I thank him for this next time I see him. We’re not particularly close; I’m much more like my mother in general, and she and I just have an easier relationship. But I love my dad dearly, and maybe it’s the wine I’ve been drinking, but we’re all at an age where I think we’d better start telling each other some of these things, before it’s too late.
Oh, and apparently he gave up smoking for me.
I have fond memories of the smell of tobacco shops when Dad would pick up his pipe tobacco. But, according to old family stories, sometime in elementary school I started learning of the evils of smoking, and apparently pestered my dad into quitting. I have no idea how serious a smoker he was, or if it was really me who caused him to quit, or how difficult it was (or wasn’t) to do. I just know that he did that for us.
Unfortunately, I had terrible parents. I won’t go into that here. I will say that my dad, like WhyNot’s dad , made his child support and alimony payments. Not for me (I was 18 when the divorce was finally final,) but for my younger sister. I thought nothing of it at the time, but having heard from so many moms of the struggles they have had to collect even paltry amounts of child support, I have to give him respect. Thanks, Dad.
Generally speaking, little kids suck at everything:
-musical instruments
-sports
-crafts/arts
The problem is that if their parents tell them this, they will never go on to become good at anything. So parents sit through mind-numbing concerts with squeaking saxophones and farting tubas, and soccer games that are essentially a swarm of little kids around a ball, and they apply praise and encouragement, waiting for the days when the kid actually starts getting entertainingly good at these things - when concerts are pleasing to the ear, sports/arts/crafts pleasing to the eye.
As an adult, I am physically agile/fit, I have an appreciation for music, and I am a skilled craftsman and handyman - and I’m grateful to my parents for not just putting up with me when I wasn’t good at these things, but actually encouraging me. They sat patiently through all those elementary and junior-high concerts and soccer games, Dad tolerated some of the crappy repairs I did around the house for him, and they praised my creative craft projects, despite my dodgy workmanship. Now that my dad has Parkinson’s disease I’m grateful whenever I have the opportunity to visit and take care of all of their odd jobs around the house in a way that would please the most critical craftsman; I would not be capable of doing so if they had not bit their tongues all those years ago.
Frankly, my parents are better people than I am. Years ago this article made me laugh my ass off, but it rings true: if I had a kid who handed me one of these drawings, I don’t know if I could make myself say “that’s wonderful” with a straight face.
My son HATED drawing, as a little kid, because he KNEW he wasn’t good at it. Other 3 year olds could draw an absolute mess and tell you happily, “It’s a horsie.” But my son was too smart and realistic, even at 3. He knew what a horsie really looks like, and knew darn well that his scrawlings didn’t look anything like a horsie.
He hates doing anything he can’t do well, and always has. But almost NOBODY is good at anything early on. As “Tiger Mom” Amy Chua put it, “Nothing is fun until you’re good at it.”
You would, because you see something different when you look at your kids pictures (especially that age) or go to their band concerts.
You see a kid who couldn’t hold a crayon be able to draw. You see a kid who drew purple trees come to the realization trees are green (usually). You see a kid who only squeeked on the clarinet be able to get through a whole song with only one squeek. You see the kid who at the beginning of the season spent more time picking his nose than knowing where the ball was actually chase the ball down the field - he didn’t get close to it - but that’s a huge step from picking your nose in the middle of the field! You don’t see the end result - you do, but you don’t focus on it - you see the progression of can’t hold a crayon to scribbles to something that starts to look like representational art, to something that you can tell what it is the moment you look at it - and if you are lucky - you see the day when you say “I couldn’t draw that!” and mean it.
My dad is the typical farmer. The guy who was born to it, followed in the footsteps of his father and his father before him going back generations, the kind of guy who would be the farmer in the classic lit you’d have to read in school. It wasn’t his job, it was his lifestyle and he lived it in everything he did.
He and my mom saw the writing on the wall: family farming would no longer support a family. To survive doing it you’d have to go big and hire employees. And they had a teenage son who wasn’t interested in farming and wanted to go to university and a little girl who probably would be in the same boat.
So he decided to quit farming and get a job. He got a nice job lined up, still farming related, but it was a government job. Government doesn’t hire people without high school diplomas - did I mention he dropped out in 8th grade to work on the farm? So in his 50s, he got his GED. He was doing the same schoolwork his son was!
But that’s isn’t even the big part of it. The part I didn’t realize until later was that he gave up his autonomy. He was used to making all the decisions and being his own boss, and since farming was his whole life, it wasn’t like he could just get a new job if he didn’t like something. And for the first time since he was a young man, he had to take the orders from someone else. It wore him down so much and it wasn’t until I was much older I realized what it meant for him to take that job.
Well - several of you have mentioned not being the man your father was. For me - I hope that’s true. In a drunken rage, my father murdered his second wife with a hunting rifle. Meanwhile, my single mother spent the next few years struggling to raise 3 kids while slowly dying of cancer.
But to the OP, for me it was my oldest brother. For those key years when my mother was dying and I was a 10-12 year old boy looking for a father figure, my 20 year old brother totally stepped in. At the time I just thought he liked having me hang out with all his much older friends. But now I realize what he was doing - including me in his life and giving me an example of how to be a man (albeit a very young one). I can never thank him enough for that. Sadly he himself passed at a far too early age - so I can’t thank him now.