Our Collateral Effects

Taking care of business. Yes, it's BTO day, but it fits with the feeling of what I want to address with this piece today. I have a positive feeling after over two years of strained finances, failing health, and all the peripheral damage that comes with it, including strain on family and friends (thank you all), and I have that positivity due to the continued support of each one of these. In a recent post I said that 2011 is my year and God save any one who gets in my way. There's more than one reason for that. My dad passed away six years ago. Although we, his kids love and miss him, and remember him for fond memories, it is a true mystery how he did it. How did he get through his life with two houses, one wife, and seven successful, respectable kids...really, quite a great life for a guy who really never had a clue as I look back on it now. I can only say that because I still hold him in the highest reverence, because he really did, and still does hold my respect, despite making tremendous mistakes in life. But he was no quitter. And THAT is what I'm trying to get at. Forgetting his mistakes for the purpose of this, they don't matter. But even with everything else, this man had a lifetime of mountains to climb, with no reason to think he could succeed, and no gear, and he just kept taking care of business, every day. He had no easy childhood, which I'll leave vague. In addition, he lived through the Depression, and Prohibition, which employed my grandda as a rum runner...I'm told, the only work he could find at the time. I know my dad was in the Army for a while. He worked on the railroad. He drove truck quite a while. He worked more than one job at a time more than once, at gas stations, factories, motels, cooking (he was a great short order cook), and I'm sure some I never knew about. He and my mother started their family with my oldest brother born in 1954, and my dad smoked, drank heavily, and never stopped working. I grew up watching his work ethic and his respect for showing up every day to his job, for paying his bills, and NEVER did we know when my parents were having money issues. Of COURSE he made the price of food the topic at dinner...he had five sons to deter from raiding his pantry while he worked all day! Lets say that's the reason. Anyway, they went on to have two more girls, the last in 1979. By this time, my dad had stopped drinking, and started rescuing other alcoholics, which he was quite good at, even proud of, although pride isn't really the right word for this man. He was now working all day, and taking care of business several nights a week at AA. This man would freak out at the paperboy in the 1960's if he rode his bicycle into our patio...after having been repeatedly told, of course. But was the kindest man to a person in need you would ever meet. If you took only this man's flaws, he would never pass any test, as any of us. But, put his nature together, his actions, reactions, tests and horrors, history and amazing feats, and he just kept going. Step by step. Day after day. Always a surprise to me, always respected by me, to the very end. His collateral effects on me have only now become apparent, and only because my best friend asked how I've done it...that is, gotten through the past two years and kept my sense of humor and sanity (we assume.) Never have I given it a second thought. I've just always trudged through every hard time with shoulders firm and feet set, and my will set on auto-pilot. Well, it turns out that my dads collateral effects have been my well invested inheritence for a long, long time. I am not exactly like my dad, but the taking care of business gene has certainly embedded itself deeply and surely into my DNA strand. I never thanked him for that. Thanks Dad.