What is a Dad?

Not A Grampy and I were married in 1987.

My daughter was born in 1981, my son was born in 1983.

The father of my children and I were divorced in 1985.

The only DAD my children have known is Not A Grampy.

Their father disappeared from their lives in 1990. Well, there was the occasional phone call, promise for a visit, claim of visiting them.

A Dad is

• someone who can teach the boy to ride a bike
• rollerblade with both kids while Lady the dog pulls them on a leash
• create a sailboat joke out of a napkin in a restaurant
• teach them how to make snakes out of the papers from straws
• be there when they are sick
• teach them how to ice skate
• take them to the emergency room when they hurt themselves ice skating
• do the laundry
• pull the keys to their car when they break the rules
• argue with the daughter until the sun comes up because they both have to have the last word
• is someone who loves their mother unconditionally and they both know it
• knows algebra and helps them with it
• does laundry
• buys bras for birthdays
• buys condoms and leaves them annonymously in the medicine cabinet
• loves them both unconditionally
• drives across country, across North America with family and doesn't leave us all along side some highway in Canada
• cooks dinners
• buys bicycles
• puts together Barbie Houses for Christmas
• buys stereo for Christmas
• takes son to Hooters

Anyone can be a Father. But if you want to be a DAD, you have to grow up and accept responsibility for all of your actions, past and present, because God knows they are going to find out and call you on it.

You have to be honest.

To be a DAD, you have to be something Special. If you have any doubts that you are Special, then pull back and don't even try. You will do more harm than good. If a DAD can't even respect the mother of his child, then he can only be a Father.

And that may be the best for the Child.