As I write this it is Father’s Day. I really hadn’t given it much thought. My Dad passed away a long time ago… nearly 40 years. In one of the more humorous chapters in the Hurst clan’s life, Mom remarried… a story for another column one of these days… and I was blessed with a truly wonderful stepfather for another 20 years until he passed away just a few years ago.
While many kids never get to know their fathers for various reasons, God blessed me with two-and-a-half dads as my big brother, Max, has done his best to look out for me over the years and, thank God, even though he is truly an old fart these days, he is still there giving me advice, yelling at me from time to time and even… sometimes… being a little more patient with me than when we were growing up.
Ya gotta love technology. As I’m typing this, my phone lit up on my desk. It was a video from my crazy big brother. Anybody who knows me well has heard me say, “My big brother is the definition of why you don’t give rednecks money!” He is on his way home from a high school reunion in Mississippi. He is driving his new, very expensive convertible… he’s in his mid-70s, by the way, and, like me, seems to never plan on growing up… and he showed me the speedometer that was displaying 85 and then held the phone up through the open convertible top so I could see the clouds and scenery he was passing. I refer you back to my earlier quote about rednecks.
But I digress… as I was talking about fathers. Right now, the most important father I know is my son, Jarrod. No… to his credit he has always been smarter than me and knows it would be a waste of time to try and parent his crazy dad. What makes him so important is that he is the father to my grandson, Peter.
I will be the first to admit that I was never a great dad. Poor Jarrod was born as my career was getting busy and I was never around like I should have been. But, thank God, he has never held that against me and, amazingly, has turned out to be one of the best dads I have ever seen. They say things often skip a generation so maybe he inherited that from my dad and his grandfather on his Mom’s side. He and our daughter-in-law, Janet, are just amazing parents. They might spoil Peter just a bit too much but… OMG… he’s such a sweet and cute kid it is hard not to spoil him. Nothing like I was as a child… I’ve written about the spankings my poor mom had to administer to my reverse regions… and Jarrod, while a very cute kid, was born a 40-year-old adult.
Anyway, the main thing I wanted to say this month is Happy Belated Father’s Day to all you dads out there. There are many different ways to be a dad and I hope you all had a wonderful day and are appreciated for the special love and guidance you share with your “kids” no matter how you are attached to them. Keep up the good work!
