hey dave's blogging

Yeah it's been two years since I made a blog post. So sue me.

It's fairly evident if you've read many of my posts that this blog has centered around my relationship with my dad. Just yesterday, a memory bubbled to the top that is very emblematic of our relationship.

Daddy wasn't overly, outwardly emotional. Neither was he terribly demonstrative of his affection toward his family. He expressed his feelings but you had to know what to look for. 

When I left home for college, I actually cleaned my room and made my bed up before I left. These are two things I NEVER EVER DID. When I got back home the next weekend (you have heard Troy is a suitcase college?), Daddy was home alone. He sat down with me and made what I at first thought was an odd request. He said to me "When you leave Sunday don't make up your bed."  

For him, a made bed was a reminder that all his children were gone from home and had all become adults. (Little would he know that day that three years later I would move back in for three more years, thus further delaying the empty nest.)

He was communicating to me in the best way he knew how that he loved me and missed me. 

Would I have preferred him to have said so in explicit terms? Sure. But that wasn't his way.

Remembering this got me to thinking about our expectations of our parents.  How is it that we as children automatically have a clear picture of how we are supposed to be raised and who our parents are? It's amazing how perspective changes as we age. 

Newsflash, the best of parents are mostly just winging it. Trying to get by and do right by their children. And at the same time, they have their own issues that they deal with that we as children often know nothing about. It's too bad we can't have this revelation as we are growing up and living in our parents' homes.

I have learned over the years, despite my immature thoughts to the contrary, that I had a really good set of parents. Did everything always go the way I wanted? Nope, and that's a good thing.