Welcome

Advice from Dad... That statement could carry a lot of weight. Whether your father is always around or has gone on to the other side, whether you had an excellent or poor relationship with your father, or whether you even knew your father, you will have a different feeling when you hear it. I will try to do what I never had, give fatherly advice. Much like a football team that has two quarterbacks, actually having no quarterback, I had multiple father figures in my life, but none took the role as a father in my life. That should not be construed to mean that I have not had a father. I had multiple men in my life who served as a father figure but none took it upon themselves to do the hard task of doing the difficult task of being a father. My biological father I am sure would have taken a bigger role in my life had he been in a different time in his life but I spent limited time with him. Camping on occasion along with my older half brother, a trip to his native Texas, and a number of trips to McDonald's with my brother. These are the limited memories I have with my biological father. Then after years of very limited contact, I found out that he had developed cancer from a life of heavy drinking and had passed. At fifteen years old, it was a very difficult thing to process. I was not very close to him, nor did I have time to process that he would eventually be gone. The feelings on it have changed throughout time from not really understanding it all, to anger that he had never really been a father to me, to sadness that I never had a relationship with him, to now a wonder of what could have been if he had been more involved in my life. Still, I wonder what our relationship would be if he was still walking this Earth and if now, being an adult, I could put forth the effort to have tried to have a relationship. My stepfather who was married to my mother a few years after my birth was always called "Dad." Whether or not he deserved it or wanted it, he was who I looked at as my dad. To this day, I call him dad and he serves as grandpa to my children. Even after my mother's divorce from him, my love and care for him only got stronger. He, however, never really took the fatherly figure role on full tilt. At times, he would play the role, but only to abandon it for the role of friend. His support was lukewarm as he often would do just enough to satisfy his own guilt and then would leave my mother, especially financially, the rest of the responsibility. I am not going to lie and act as if I recognized this at the time, nor act as if I didn't enjoy the friendship he shared with me. Especially when my mother moved me away from home further into the suburbs of Detroit leaving all my friends behind, my dad became my best friend. We shared great memories together and still talk about those to this day, but I also have to deal with the fact that I learn more from YouTube about fatherly lessons like fixing things or life lessons than I did from my father. Many memories made but many lessons left on the table. My mother's partner following her divorce from my "dad" served in many ways as a person who helped me see many fine things in life. As a successful businessman, he made possible many opportunities that I would not otherwise have had. The lavish trips around the country and the generosity he shared with me allowed me to grow in many ways and gave me experiences that I have to this day and have given me a love of the niceties of life. He also helped give me my two younger brothers who I was able to connect to as a brother and as a mentor figure, relationships that I highly value. However, he made it very clear, much to my insistence but also out of respect in some ways, that he was not my father, nor was he interested in being such. Much of the on-again, off-again relationship we shared has left us both appreciative of what we provided each other, he someone who paid for much of the greatest experiences I have had and I, I would hope, a good mentor for his two sons. There has never been the expectation nor the illusion that our relationship was more than that of simply two guys who while we shared many of the same views, battled for alpha dog status in his house. This obviously a losing battle for me, but without the understanding from a father figure in the importance of a man's dominance in his own home, I, of course, challenged this relentlessly growing up. Even with this tension, we were able to build an amicable relationship which we have used to appreciate the growth of our shared care, my younger brothers. Finally, I struggled with the decision to add this last person. All through my life, I not only lacked any male figure to take the paternal role in my life, but I also lacked any grandfather who would have possibly filled lat role. Both of my grandfathers were distant and either too old or died while I was too young to serve in any fatherly way for me with that void. However, I have had someone who seems to have taken on the role, at least in a way. My father-in-law, I believe, has always wanted a son. Being gifted with five daughters, this former farmer, and engineer I have always felt wanted to take impart any and all wisdom to any son-like figure he could find. Not being too particularly outspoken and seemingly very stoic, he has always been open and understanding of my failures as a man. While the typical tense relationship of a man and his in-laws existed, more out of he not wanting to ruin a relationship he knew to be so important to his middle daughter and I not wanting to embarrass myself to make him reconsider whether or not I was the right man for his daughter. A mutual respect has formed between us through many experiences and mutual failure in many different things, I have truly learned more from him to fill the void of fatherly advice than from anyone. While the time to impart fatherly wisdom has pasted for so many issues, I still seek his guidance in a way I have not for any of the other father figures in my life, unfortunately, it wasn't until I was 30 years old that I realized this and now I am needing to give my own children that fatherly advice. That is exactly what this blog is meant to do. It serves multiple purposes. For one, it is a place where I can place my thoughts to not forget the lessons that I need to teach my children that they are either not ready for or may need to reference back to later in life. Second, it serves as an outlet for me to place a dialog to my children and due to my own foolish anxiety about my health (which I actually have no reason to have, being a normally healthy, albeit overweight and out of shape middle-aged man) just in case my insecure, worst fears were to happen and I leave my children behind without a father. Finally, it is meant for anyone else who might be like me. Anyone who did not have a father to give them this advice, I hope to provide, likely in a poor way considering my own experiences, the advice that I never got. At the end of the day, this will run the gambit of topics and will have little to no organization but be more of a stream of thought. I do not plan to censor myself on political, religious or other controversial issues and will tackle the hard topics head-on rather than tiptoe around them.