Role model

 

Every morning my father got up before the rest of us. He shaved, ran a bath, and then went down to the kitchen to cut up fruit for our mynah bird and monkey. He would fry three pieces of baloney, make toast and coffee and eat breakfast then go up and bathe, shine his shoes and drive thirty miles to work.

Sometimes he would let George, our Cinnamon ring tail monkey, out to run while he did that, which is why I know what was going on. George would run upstairs and jump on my pillow, trying to pull the curlers out of my hair!

I learned so many things from my father. He was a voracious reader and loved both being a student and teaching. He was often working three jobs to make ends meet, but sometimes he would let me skip school and ride with him when he was going to make a speech at some university. That way I got to see them before I had to choose one.

I used to wish he was like other fathers who would go out and throw a ball with their children, or play board games, but mostly he was my idol. I wanted to grow up and be like him and his friends.

Until my mother died and he eventually remarried. Looking back I think he thought he had a lot to offer his new young wife. I think he thought he could put her through college and give her a good life, but that was not the case. She was eventually the end of him. He broke his collar bone and she had him put in a nursing home where he finally died. It was a longer and more complicated story, but it was all sad and I learned one more thing about life.

People teach us by what they do and don't do. Nobody is perfect, but everybody can be a role model in one way or another.