The love of a parent.

The love of a child.



Is this different or the same?



This post will be only part of the 'history lesson' I had planned. My own personal history lesson could go on for hours, days, weeks. To try to write every idiom or criteria that my parents' did to nuance my personality...well, it would be a never ending story.



I watch my children look at their father, with such adoration, usually. I appreciate this because I know, for a fact, that they also look at me like that, only less frequently. I am the disciplinarian, most of the time. Not because my husband is inadequate, but because I'm the one who is physically present when the bad behavior arises. We are not a couple who 'waits around' to 'discuss' discipline with one another. Husband and I have total trust in one another's parenting abilities...and of course, I frankly, am better at most of them.



Do my children love me the way I love them? Will they ever know to what lengths I would go for them?

This is my thought when I think of my now deceased father, who was, at best...in the glossary of proper parenting, a mediocre example of fatherhood.

My father was many, many things. He was born into a family of Scandinavian descent. As in, my grandfather sounded like the 'chef' from Seasame Street. My father was born to parents who didn't love another. They separated when 'divorce' was still taboo. A big 'no way'...my grandfather left my grandmother when my father was six years old. For a younger woman.

My grandmother then proceeded to not only drag out any divorce proceedings, into the seven yr rule...but went on to preach to her two children, my father and aunt, that THEY were probably the reason he left.

My father was born into a family of pride and money. After the ugliest divorce settlement in the history of our small town, my father was bounced between two worlds. Both sets volleyed for him, like he was a prize to be won.

He went to college. Made it through undergraduate college in three years, with honors. Was brillant.

He was made to decide, immediately, whether or not to go to law school. He entered graduate school and at that time the Vietnam War was in full swing. My father deliberately quits law school and enlists into the Marine Corps. For the next decade, he served his country.

He still doesn't know what to do.

He returns to 'small town americana'...try to settle down, find a wife, have a family. Begins working for my grandfather the family business, which was a lumberyard.

He finds a wife. He marries her. The two then get deployed to Germany.

My parents live in Germany. They are homesick and without a baby to occupy them. My father starts drinking.



The last sentence should be a red flag.



My father was a brilliant human being. He could read a book a day. He could do math problems that college professors would blush at. He could speak 4 languages. He had a capacity for love without compromise. He enjoyed old people, young people. He liked kids. Kids liked him.



He was also an alcoholic.

He was also an abuser.

I never justified him being either. I never got to feel the impact of his anger or frustration. That was all for my mother.