Christmas with my dad

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts. ~Kahil Gibran

I was thinking of this poem today.

We drove an hour and a half to meet my father for lunch. That was not how I envisioned spending the Christmas holiday with him, which is odd because my vision is something that has never actually happened. My vision takes place over a few days, a fire is going in the fireplace, we're all drinking eggnog and laughing while the kids open presents. Its a made-for-TV version that I've made up somewhere along the way and then held out to be "normal" even though its never been the norm for us.

Although we talk at least once a week; I last saw him over eight months ago. When asked to visit, he'd say, "sure, we'll hatch out a plan." A month or so later I say, "next weekend," and he says, "put me down for a maybe." As the date approaches he suggests meeting halfway for lunch instead.

If you know my father, you're probably laughing by now. It is so typical--and my holiday vision is so obviously not. This is the man who left my wedding immediately after the father-daughter dance. We hadn't even cut the cake yet. He refuses to drive down on holidays because of the traffic and "besides," he says, "who really cares about the actual day?" I just don't get it. He's retired and I'm his only child, its not like he has a busy schedule.

Thus, Kahil Gibran's poem came to mind this afternoon. Not only can we not make our children think and be like us, but we can't make our parents either.

What Kahil failed to say is that the real folly of expecting the people in our lives to become our vision of who we think they should be is that we miss out on who they actually are.

For years I kept expecting him to do things he just wasn't going to do. This was my failing, not his. I wanted him to be exactly like I thought he should be which only took the focus off of how great he already was.

He's the dad that stopped everything and built me a treehouse because I wanted one right then. Okay, so it didn't have any railings and telling a five year old to just "not get too close to the edge" is probably not the safest idea...but still it was a pretty cool treehouse.

He's the dad that every year on my birthday will call me and tell me the story of my birth adding in how amazing it all was. And when he tells me about his own life he tells the real stories, not the happy-go-lucky ones other dads tell. And when he tells me that he'll always love me no matter what and that he'll always be there for me, I know he means it.

So, when asked if I was disappointed to not see more of him this holiday, I honestly answered "no." I miss him, I would have liked to have seen him more, but he is who he is and I love him as he is.