Father's Day Inspiration

Father's Day Inspiration

lambsone • Jun 13, 2024

Did you have or do you have a dad that inspires/d you to be a better person? If you don't have a dad, was there a man or several men in your life that you wanted to emulate in a way that fit into your personality? If you're able to, please share the positive impact that they had on your life. This question is open to all gender responses.

intenseoldman​(dom male) • Jun 13, 2024

My father was a mixed bag. I learned from his nurturing fun loving nature, but there was another side to him. I have two clear childhood memories of telling myself I'll never be like him, and I turned out to be a much better father than he by learning from his bad example. I carry his nurturing fun loving nature, but my grandfather is the one I'd most want to be like. He and my grandmother were beautiful together. He was a very good man, and I look up to him.

lambsone • Jun 13, 2024

Thank you for sharing intenseoldman. Yes sometimes we have to look to others for inspiration instead of those who are right under our noses. I'm glad your grandparents were a great example of what a good relationship looks like.

Solace​(dom male) • Jun 13, 2024

I hated my father growing up. He was never around. When he was, he was an angry man who stayed in our home. A stranger uninvited and cruel.

He was genuinely shocked the day I asked him how his work was that day. It was my first attempt to connect with him as a kid. It was also a dim candle that was snuffed out quickly as we fought over my dogs declining health.

That is the man I remember. A man I promised myself to never be like. But that is not the man I know now. My father is a strong, successful man, who has sent three kids to college, had a long career, and is now saving a hefty retirement to plan for a wife with expensive medical needs. I have never heard my father speak ill of my mother, choosing instead to say she is a passionate woman who cares greatly about what matters to her.

So yes. I will never know who my father was as a child. I was too stupid to understand everything then. But I have a father now that I very much want to be like and I hope to have a child of my own someday to show the meaning of hardwork and persistence to the same way he has shown me.

lambsone • Jun 13, 2024

WOW, that's beautiful Solace. From what I know of you, just from reading your posts, I think you are well on your way to being the kind of good man your father turned out to be!

Solace​(dom male) • Jun 13, 2024

Thank you for your kind words. I think that for many regardless of the love or hate they have for their father, it is a great fear to not be able meet or surpass them. Especially after all my father has done to aid in that effort.

lambsone • Jun 13, 2024

We too got closer to our Father when we grew older Solace. Funny how that happens. In fact some of the best times I ever spent with him were the 4 hours every Sunday that I spent with him while my mom was in a nursing home and after her death.

I was bored silly with most of his talk but there was always something very profound that would come out of his mouth in a simple country bumpkin way that meant the world to me.

Everytime I visited him, I waited to discover what that one thing would be and he never disappointed me. He died 5 years after my mom, and we all shed tears when he was gone.

Miki​(masochist female) • Jun 14, 2024

@Solace I won't quote, your post is not far above.

Don't blame yourself too much. From what you described he had issues while you happened to be a child growing up. What had happened was he sorted out whatever it was that caused him to be an "angry man who stayed at your home..."

It could have been worse, if you think that's possible.. He could have been the man you know today while you were growing up but something or someone causes him to turn surly and intolerable. That has happened far more often than I care to count.

Toss in another thing "we" see fairly often. Fathers and sons and a grain of salt. Ditto for mothers and daughters. Just one of those things.

-------------------------------------------------------

I am not speaking from personal experience whatsoever, but rather those of people I have known and communicated with over the years... even decades.
My relationship with my old man is as expected given the leftovers of the culture from our heritage. Not warm, not cold, just compatibility.
That and he lives on the other side of the country with my mother and my brother doesn't live far from them.

I did the usual.... I sent him a tie.

lambsone • Jun 14, 2024

How many ties have you sent him over the years Miki? LOL!

Solace​(dom male) • Jun 14, 2024

Hello Miki, always a pleasure.

I don't blame myself. It's part of growing up learning these things. I just identify it for what it was and is.

I do feel great sympathy for my father now. I reflect on how alone he might have felt at times in his own home with his own family. What a waste.