Raised in hope, the best gift of all

Writing from the heart is tricky business. 

I found that out in a sheepish—albeit comical way—when, once upon a column, I put it all “out there” and wrote about issues with my Greek figure (and included in my column how much I weighed) and my subsequent choices to begin to lead a healthier lifestyle.

An avid reader of said “baring” then found me sitting at a local hamburger joint stuffing in a cheeseburger and called me on it right there in the restaurant from across the room.

I wanted to throw down one of those black magic circles from the “Looney Tunes” cartoons, jump in and disappear to some faraway city as one of the anonymous populace. 

I’ve been writing my column since 2004 and I think I’ve covered just about every personal topic known to “readerkind.” Yet, I still find that the delicate river that runs through us all, and its muddy layers of our thick-skinned ways, never really reaches an end in discussion.

“There’s always something,” as my late grandmother Florence Drennan used to say (although she usually was talking about the one more thing to do around the farm that she hadn’t planned on.)

This writing space is good medicine and I am very lucky to have it, especially when I use the opportunity to write from my heart and today is just another perfect opportunity to take to the river once more.

Best selling author Neil Gaiman penned good advice. 

“Write. Put one word after another. Find the right word, put it down. Finish what you’re writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it.”

I love and adore my father, Bruce. He is 87 years old and when I get to thinking about the depth of human being he is, I can only hope to be as good and kind and wise in all my days as he is in his.

He remains the cornerstone of his daughter’s life.

He raised me in hope and, in fact, both of my parents did.

It was my father’s most common reply to my childhood questions that instilled in me an optimistic self-power that to this day defends me in difficult circumstances and fuels my goals for purposeful happiness.

“It’s always a possibility,” my dad used to say—and still does if you ask him the right question.

My dad is my mentor and my friend, my ranch helper and my favorite historian with an encyclopedia of knowledge and stories about his career and his life that one day will fill the pages of a book.

It’s an incredible gift to have him here in this life with me.

“Fathers and daughters have a romance that goes on for the rest of their lives, destined to ripen and age as they dance through the days of their husbands and wives. Up near the surface their love is distinct,

like a garden surveyed in the sun, in which seed time and full bloom are credibly linked by a consciousness shared and hard won. 

Deep down below, where the world is a dream, and the dream is a world of its own, all manner of memories the moments redeem in a place where one's never alone.” – Nicholas Gordon

Right from my heart I write to you, my dad. I love you. Happy Father’s Day.