Happy Birthday Daddy
I'm grateful for your strong seed that sired all my brothers and sisters, connected them to other loves, and sired your grandchildren and great-grandchildren. I know how much you instinctively loved kids and I know you're truly and rightfully proud of all of us.
I'm grateful for your silliness, that made it more than okay for us to be goofy kids. In many ways, you were one of us: always a kid at heart who had to figure out how to be a grownup, as we all do.
I'm grateful you understood -- and stood for -- the beautiful creature who was our mother. Her graceful endurance, sense of humor, and total forgiveness of the foibles of others show me now what a strong and confident person she was, despite her shyness. A timid woman could never have faced nor created what she did, as the loving anchor and GPS of our home.
And I'm grateful for your high IQ intelligence. It's a proud legacy we all honor and hopefully share to some degree, but you were the master.
I brag it made you crazy that I couldn't do math. I only submitted to you as my math tutor once. Even at 8 years old, I was smart enough to avoid that at all costs forever after! I'm still not grateful you made me go to summer school after failing freshman algebra. I brag I passed algebra after that, barely. Maybe I am grateful just a tiny bit, but it was mostly a waste of summer. :)
I'm grateful for your amazing stories. You were SUCH a marvelous storyteller! According to Chuck and his children, that gift was passed down from Percy's mother, Ella Gilbert 1853-1933. Apparently all the hilarity in the family started with her. It is said she was an especially masterful practical jokester, and I have heard some pretty funny stories of her from our cousins.
I am grateful for all the stories from your boyhood in the 20s and 30s on Long Island. I don't remember most of them, but I know the places: Lynbrook. West Hempstead, Merrick High School. I love the one when you were a boy and a bird pooped on Grandpa Percy's shoulder, and he looked down at you and said, "It's a good thing cows don't fly."
I'm grateful for your kindness to me as a little girl, always appropriate, protective, indulgent and reassuring. I'm grateful you always tucked the blanket under my feet when you put me to bed. One time when I was about 5 years old, after you tucked in my feet and started to leave, I had this sudden panic. I think I knew even then it would be hard to find someone like you to love. Feeling vaguely guilty on behalf of Mom, I said Daddy? Yes? When I grow up, will you marry me? I'm still grateful you broke into a wide smile and said slowly, "Suuure..."
And then, I'm grateful that though you were gone, I ended up marrying someone so very like you. I knew it when I met Val. He is funny, silly, brilliant, a bit spoiled, highly creative, had anger issues, believed deeply in duty, honor, right and wrong. They say you always marry one of your parents, and you were all those things.
I'm grateful you modeled a sure masculine love for family with your imperfections and your often fierce and immature passions. You showed me what to watch for and what to watch out for.
I'm grateful you were not always the best father for me. I had to accept myself even when my own daddy thought I was a bit too much. Mom told me once I was her most difficult and demanding child. And precious Matt was her most placid baby, for which she was very grateful after 2 years of me. Yup she said that to me. But she said it with love and deep understanding and no rancor at all, in a way which made me feel purely accepted.
In the end, I'm grateful for the strong base that you created with Mom for all of us. Things were never perfect, but I'm still proud to be your daughter.
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