Dear Daddy,

I could start by thanking you for the easy things...

My bed, my clothes and the food that you put on the table when I was
young. What I really want to thank you for is all of the small decisions
that you made on a daily basis that I will never know about.
I want to thank you for the times that I cried as a baby, and you got up
out of bed to hold me because you wanted to let mom sleep.
I want to thank you for all of the bedtime stories that you read to me,
even on those days you’d put in extra hours at work. A lesser man would
have outsourced the ‘responsibility’ to his wife and gone straight to
bed... but you chose not to. I want to thank you for how you handled the
rough patches in your life, as you turned further into the love of your
family when you could have just as easily closed off to us.
I want to thank you for stopping old habits that weren’t serving you (like
smoking) in favor of being a better role model.
I want to thank you for all of the times that you carried me on your
shoulders, even when I was getting too big to be up there.
I want to thank you for having and resolving disagreements with my
mother in front of me as a child, so I could grow up to know that conflict
in relationships is not only inevitable, but something to be embraced and
seen as an opportunity to further grow together.
I want to thank you for every time you kissed, hugged, or complimented
mom, my siblings, and I even before my brain was storing memories...
for every single one of those moments is locked in my mind and my
heart forever.
I want to thank you for being the best possible role model I could have
hoped for. And for all of the moment to moment tiny decisions that you
made, that I will never know about, that forged you into the man, and the
father, that you became.
I love you, dad.