Pops

So today is Father's Day.  Normally this is where all the good fathers talk about how disgruntled we are that our day doesn't receive the attention that Mother's Day gets.  Or that fathers in the Black community are only seen as deadbeats.  I think that's been spoken on enough.  I'm just going to put my personal touch on this day and talk about my father.  I'm the youngest of four, so I'm sure the memories they have will be different from the memories that I have.  My earliest memories were crawling over to get some pecans as you can see from the pictures.  I probably didn't even know who he was.  I just knew he had something I wanted and he was willing to give it to me.  And that's how he has been my whole life.  I remember many days when he would come home from work and fall asleep on the couch.  We thought it was funny because he was snoring.  But we made sure not to wake him up.  Other nights, he would come home and work in the yard in dress clothes.  It didn't matter.  It needed to be done so he did it.  A joke among the sibling is that all he did at work was solitaire.  Of course, that wasn't true.  But even if it was true, he earned it.  We had some disagreements about rap music.  There was also a disagreement about whether or not to let me play football.  But at the end of the day, he was looking out for me.  That's like a walking oxymoron.  Looking out for everybody, and not taking any stuff.  And now I can call him my brother.  My mentor.  My leader.  My adviser.  I've learned so much by just watching what he does.  I don't have many current pictures because he is always the one behind the camera.  He rarely missed any events that he had, even if the action was terrible.  I'm experiencing that now as I go to my daughter's softball games and record them.  It doesn't matter.  It's about the memories.  Thirty three years and I'm still following him.  And I'm not embarrassed about that.