Fathers are\u00a0a lot like movie stars.<\/p>\n
They cast the biggest, the broadest, the most all-encompassing shadow in the house.\u00a0 They inspire, motivate, de-motivate and terrorize.\u00a0 And all too often, they do it all without ever trying.\u00a0 The memory that sticks in my mind from my own family features\u00a0my hubby and\u00a0Zack, our eldest (now 18 and about to head off to UCF to college although Mommy isn't sure how she'll like the dorm room).\u00a0<\/p>\n
Zack, as a\u00a0combat crawler at the age when he should have been toddling, had\u00a0a couple of challenges.\u00a0 First, his Mom worried constantly that he might be hungry.\u00a0 (She still does).\u00a0 Today he can just give me the look, say he loves me, and leave the table.\u00a0 As a creepy crawler, he didn't have that option.\u00a0 So he was a big butterball of a baby and toddling presented size challenges.\u00a0 Second, his own mental make-up, even at that little age, meant he didn't want to do anything until he could succeed.\u00a0 He did his combat crawling while his peers\u00a0held onto furniture and took\u00a0lurching little steps.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Then one day\u00a0Zack's dad was in the kitchen and Zack and Mom were in the den.\u00a0 Dad started whistling and Zack jumped to his feet and ran into the kitchen, chasing the man making the merry noise.\u00a0 Yeah, his Father inspired his first steps without even trying.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Both boys grew up basking in their Father's presence and working to avoid his ire.\u00a0 They learned the Daddy Rules (no hitting,\u00a0spitting, kicking or biting\u00a0and especially no lying) at a young age.\u00a0 As they grew, some of the rules were easier to follow than others.\u00a0 But they always do their best to make Dad proud, and they always, always basked.\u00a0 They'd gather round on the floor while Dad sat at the computer playing\u00a0some game and the kids would spend hours just watching Dad play and cheering him on.\u00a0 It resulted in our having a LAN network in\u00a0our house.\u00a0 At their\u00a0elementary schools both of our boys\u00a0taught the teachers\u00a0computer tricks.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Daddy Dearest casts a big shadow in romance novels too.\u00a0 In Brotherly<\/a><\/em>,\u00a0 the Jamison Father is bringing home\u00a0a young widow\u00a0to wed when the train crashes.\u00a0 Daddy and his bride die, and the bride's young daughter goes to live with Daddy's sons who would have been her brothers.\u00a0 So the whole book is essentially Daddy's legacy teaching each of his sons different lessons.\u00a0 In Faerie<\/a><\/em>, sins of the long-ago Father inspired the curse, and the failure of Nial's Da to avoid entanglements long enough to find his Faerie Fated Forever casts a tragic pall over his household that inspires his vow to avoid his father's fate.\u00a0 Heather's Papa in Faerie<\/a><\/em> is a present force, the wise man who sees the beauty in his daughter and who knows Nial will too - eventually.\u00a0 In Golden<\/a><\/em>, the sins of Colt's father cost him his son, and the devotion of Viv's whisks her away from\u00a0Colt, forcing him to face the past that is also his future.\u00a0 In E-mail<\/a><\/em>, Alix's vow to his father prompts the rebellion that weds him\u00a0to the Belle Bitch.\u00a0 That\u00a0introduces him to\u00a0his wife's young half-sister who is the living embodiment of the promise to his Father he will keep.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n In my real life romance, as in my stories, the path of true love has been strewn with obstacles largely of my own making.\u00a0 Don't most of us create the very problems we must overcome?\u00a0 But the rocks keep the\u00a0route interesting and force us off the beaten path onto side trails where the view is as inspiring as it is terrifying.\u00a0 Hopefully, the reason he's still with me (problems and all) is that he knows I love him to pieces.\u00a0 While he may not be completely perfect, he's completely perfect for me, and for our children.<\/p>\n One of the many reasons I love my husband is his devotion to our children.\u00a0 He's had to practice tough love because both our boys have their issues.\u00a0 The eldest is an Aspie (Asperger's Syndrome) and John has had to work with him\u00a0to set expectations, rewards\u00a0and punishments and he had to follow through, always and consistently.\u00a0Aspies are, after all, (brilliant) rule based rut people.\u00a0 \u00a0John's had to be tough when Mom wasn't.\u00a0 John's had to be tough when the school system Mom corralled couldn't be.\u00a0 Today the tough love John\u00a0practiced has helped Zack mature into\u00a0a young man with morals and values and standards, ready\u00a0to begin making his own choices.\u00a0 Sam is still a work in progress, but John's influence has begun to guide him to set his own goals and work to achieve them.\u00a0 Sam too shows early signs of growing into a reflection of the values and standards instilled by his father.<\/p>\n So, Fathers are like movie stars\u00a0because the essence of who they are infuses, compels, and\u00a0motivates those around them, particularly, those little beings lucky enough to share Dad's gene pool.\u00a0 Unlike\u00a0actors on a silver screen,\u00a0fathers are real life heroes who will live on long after the house lights in the theater dim.\u00a0\u00a0The best of fathers, like my husband John, manage to be\u00a0the foundation of the past and the guardian of the future.\u00a0<\/p>\n Daddy will live on through\u00a0his little dearests.\u00a0\u00a0One day the dearests will be whistling familiar tunes in kitchens of their own, summoning a new generation to carry on the family traditions.<\/p>\n Happy Father's Day, sweetheart.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fathers are\u00a0a lot like movie stars. They cast the biggest, the broadest, the most all-encompassing shadow in the house.\u00a0 They inspire, motivate, de-motivate and terrorize.\u00a0 And all too often, they do it all without ever trying.\u00a0 The memory that sticks in my mind from my own family features\u00a0my hubby and\u00a0Zack, our eldest (now 18 and ...continue reading \"An Ode To Daddy Dearest\"<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":733,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315\/revisions\/733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}