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Father's Day Again

We will be taking a road trip next week so we celebrated Father's Day a week early yesterday.

My father has been gone since 2007. I miss him daily and try to emulate the many good qualities he showed me. One in particular has been on my mind as long as I've been old enough to perceive it. Because we led very different lives, because I had opportunities he lacked, we had very different life experiences. He did not understand much of academia or what I did for a living, but he was happy that what I did made me happy.

I am a curious person and so when I don't understand something there is always a tension that I should with effort understand it better. My children's lives now are in many ways to me as mine was to my father; I don't understand many of their day-to-day events and opportunities, pressures and causes as well as I would like.  The one thing that I consciously strive for with them is to take joy in their joy and be open to the understanding of their joy if and when it arrives but not to make that understanding a prerequisite. It requires trust in them but my father trusted me in ways that I only understood when I was a parent and it would be selfish not to pass that trust on to my children.

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