Interrupted & a birthday...

My map project has been put on hold along with some other last minute house things that I was going to try and finish up before school started.  My dad has been sick this past week, and my worry has just sucked all the decorating drive right out of me.

I am a daddy's girl.  Always have been and always will be.  Growing up, my dad was the one who "got" me mostly because we are so alike.  My dad was born in 1928, in fact today he turns 83, and has done in more with what he was given than anyone I know.  He dropped out of high school at the age of 15 to join the Marine Corps (yes, lied about his age and got in!).  While in the service he broke his foot but never said anything because he didn't want to be discharged.  To this day he has a bone spur that grows out of the bottom of his foot and he saws it off with a razor blade.  I guess once a Marine always a Marine.

Despite dropping out of school, my dad believed in the value of education.  He went back and got his GED, but instead of college he started a business from an invention he had sketched on a cocktail napkin in a bar.  That invention went on to become a very successful multi-million dollar corporation that he still consults for today.  He is an engineer in the truest sense and the most well read person I know.

My Dad has always been my hero.  He could fix anything, Macgyver style, no matter how broken it was.  If something was wrong my dad made it better.  In the hospital after giving birth to Sara and finding out she might have Down Syndrome, it was my dad who held my hand, and with tears streaming down his face he told me that it would all be ok.  And I believed him, because if Dad said it would be ok then it would.

I've been spending my evenings at my parents.  Mostly just sitting and watching old movies on TCM with my dad.  Charlie Chaplin, Bette Davis, and Humphrey Bogart have been keeping us company while my dad rests.  The conversation is sparse, but we are there together, this time me being the one to tell him it's going to be ok.

Happy Birthday Dad, and thank you for being someone I could look up to.  Thank you for giving me a  hero.