Saturday, September 06, 2008

What is this pig smiling about?


We went to the fair today. I just have one question. What is this pig smiling about?

Friday, September 05, 2008

Wedding Celebration


Well, we got through the wedding of my youngest daughter. We married her off on Wednesday. It was a nice reception and a beautiful ceremony. My baby girl is married.

It is funny, I told a friend of ours at the reception, how much the event reflects my life. As I looked around the room, there was my wonderful wife and my ex-wife. My children were all there; two of them with their spouses. My eldest’s wife is expecting their first child and they had my step grandchild with them. My ex-in-laws, ex-sister-in-laws, current brother-in-law and his wife, my youngest sister and my eldest nephew were all in attendance. Other relatives included nephews and nieces from both then and now. Aunts and uncles, from both “eras,” were there too.

There were friends from now and friends from before. My kid’s three dads: me, their ex-stepdad and their current stepdad. Both of them have treated the kids well. There are so many events in my life that happened with this group of people. Mom and dad have passed away, my oldest brother passed away, and my other brothers and sisters are all across the country. My youngest sister was there and my oldest brother’s son to represent my side of the family. It was so nice to have them there. They helped so much with everything.

It was an interesting mix of people with diverse interests ranging from the extreme liberal to the ultra conservative. One person observing all those who attended commented, “I’ll bet this group doesn’t get together to do things very often.”

Probably, the most interesting observation I made at the wedding was that when I looked around and saw family, family friends, and relatives I realized that other than my best friend, my wife, there was nobody there that I could call my close friend. I only have a few good friends in this world. A couple of them are out-of-state and I have a couple here in the state, but not anybody that I can call my very best friend, the kind of person that I could sit with and spill out my heart about anything that was bothering me.

I guess that's always been lacking in my life; someone who was so close to me that I could tell them anything. Maybe that's a protection mechanism. Although I think I'm one of those people who reveals too much to people, I have only had a few, so very few, friends in my life. It's a result of my own insecurities. I have always felt that as a friend, I take more than I give, I don't have a lot to offer. Although, I do love people and I love to help people.

It was odd to me that as I looked around the room there were so many different people from my life but they were all there because of their relationships with me or they were friends of those others in the room.

Like most fathers I'm proud of my children in different ways, each of them have individual talents, each of them has very individual things they bring into the family. When I look at them and think of all the things I did wrong as a parent, I wonder what my own parents thought about me as I went through the different stages in life. I know that in helping their mom and stepmom raise them, sometimes I reacted in a certain way because that was how my parents handled it while I was growing up or reacted to it in the opposite way of how they did. Many of my parenting mistakes were in trying to do it differently than my parents did it but realizing after I failed that they did it the right way. Its too late now that they're gone to tell them all the lessons I've learned from them.

If your parents are still alive make sure they know how much you appreciate the things you learned from them, especially those things you didn't realize you learned until later life and give your kids a great big hug and kiss.