Sunday, June 15, 2003

a saturday slant for father's day

Here's the Saturday slant a little bit late, but appropriate for Father's Day in any case.

Who is a hero in your life?

Heroes abound, if we recognize that heroism is not simply grand gestures of self-sacrifice for the sake of another. Courage is doing what must be done despite one's fear. Heroism is doing what must be done for another's sake despite one's fear or the cost to oneself. Usually heroes are those who perform many little acts, small sacrifices, to help others. Who is a hero in your life? What was one of his/her acts of heroism? How has that person's heroism effected you?

My Slant?

My husband really is a hero in my book. He manages to hold our family together through everything. Our teen daughter has had a rough couple of years and I have pretty much been at my wits end at times. He has remained a calm and steady anchor as we have weathered the difficult storms of teen angst and that balancing act between knowing when to intervene and when to let go and let her grow so she can own responsibility and learn about decision making and all the consequences that result from any given outcome.

He works very hard all day and then he comes home and does whatever it takes to create a sane and tranquil home life. When my daughter was taking night classes four nights a week four hours a night, he made every effort to be home in time for a quick family dinner then to drive us there to drop her off amd to pick her up because he knew that this would be the only time on those days that he would have a chance to say hi and touch base with her.

It was never easy to accomplish this as he works 40 miles away and has to take the heavily congested freeways to get home; as a manager he has to work 10-12 hours on any given day, so he would get up at 4:30 a.m. daily, make that tedious commute and after a long hard day at work, have a rushed dinner and do some more driving (twice) just so we could all be together as a family for a few precious moments.

Then pretty much every night, rain or shine, no matter how tired he is or how he's feeling, he joins me and the dogs for a walk. The dogs love this walk so much that they begin piping up with excitement about it around 8 pm nightly. I know that there have been so many times when after a long hard day at work all he wanted to do was play on the computer for awhile then head off to bed early because 4:30 in the morning just comes very quickly for the overworked. Time is a precious commodity. But he ceaselessly shares his, thinking of others first.

Then there are the countless things he does to make our lives run more smoothly. He can do and frequently has done any household chore imaginable; he is an excellent cook. He does the extensive yard work and any repair and upkeep that he possibly can. When one of us females blows a fuse, crashes a computer or cannot make some electrical appliance work, he comes to the rescue. He runs errands with me, for me, instead of me. He deals with service repair problems. He pays the bills. Sometimes I wonder what he even needs me for and why he bothers with the nuisance of it all.

In his shoes, I'm very afraid I probably wouldn't. But I know why he does it. He does it out of love and loyalty and responsibility. He does it because he takes his role as husband and father seriously. He is my hero!

Happy Father's Day!!!
Posted by etherealfire :: 12:51 AM :: 0 Comments:

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