Fox Hole

Posted on March 30, 2014 by chloebennett

So, remember how I talked on Day One about getting an apartment?  And how it was scary and what if I can’t do it?  Well, there’s more story on the housing front.

So, I found an apartment.  It was all the things I wanted it to be: close to work, cheap, possessing a fireplace, allowing of dogs…  It was perfect.  I applied, they gave me a move-in date of two weeks from the day I applied.  A week later (a week before I was supposed to move in), they called to tell me that the people in the apartment had decided not to move out and I could have a tiny one-room apartment instead.  Needless to say, with a dog and a cat who DO NOT get along, I turned them down.

Then, my church decided to rent the house they own to someone new because the current tenants were taking such bad care of it.  Choose me!  Choose me!  I will take care of the house!  I will make it pretty again!  The youth want to help me paint it!  The family at the church want to give me furniture and throw me house-warming parties!  It’s more expensive than the apartment, but it’s a house with a yard and multiple rooms and I am in love with this tiny place.  We tour it, and I see that, indeed, it does need some work.  But the house I live in house needed a LOT of work when we moved in and look where we are now!  (Friends of the family who are deeply nerdy, like us, call it The Last Homely House.) And the priest at our church said that I could do anything I wanted with it, so long as it looked nice, because they’re going to tear it down eventually!  It was perfect, friends.  Until it got looked over by a friend of ours who goes to our church and works in construction.  He found colonies of rats living in the walls and black mold in the drywall of the bathroom.  It would’ve cost twice as much to repair as it will to tear it down.  Of course, everyone made the logical choice, I didn’t move in, they’re tearing it down.

I don’t need to tell you that this is discouraging, friends.  Very discouraging.  So discouraging, in fact, that I had given up on moving at all.  I’d wait til the summer or until God saw fit to drop something right into my lap.  (He does that sometimes, I’ve found.)  I did one of those prayers that Christians do.  You know the one.  “Look, Man, if this is how it’s gonna be, then YOU handle it!  …not like I cared anyway…”

And handle it He did.

I’ve been dating The Bear for a while, driving back and forth to his apartment in Coppell for some time.  Then, one Tuesday, I was too tired for life, and I decided to just stay the night.  How bad could the drive really be?  I’d get up early the next morning.  No, really.  I could make it work.  And if I was late for one day, who cared?  I wasn’t late.  The drive wasn’t bad.  And the next time I was out there The Treecko (The Bear’s roommate) suggested offhandedly that I should move out there, to their complex.  Hahaha, wouldn’t that be funny?!

But the thought festered.  And I looked at websites.  And I suggested it to Marmee.  And she said, “Well, you should make sure the good drive wasn’t just a fluke that day.  Spend a week making the drive.”  So, the Brute Squad (The Bear and The Treecko’s apartment) hosted me for a week.  And the drive was great.  And on Friday, I surprised the Bear by walking up to an apartment in his complex and telling him, “I signed the paperwork for that apartment today.  I move in in June.”

I’m a grownup.  And it’s the best.

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Pyramids

Posted on March 12, 2014 by chloebennett

Last year, there was quite the little saga about my heart.  I’d been having these little heart flutters all my life.  Not often.  Very rarely, honestly.  But they felt like a little bug was flying around, trying to get out of my chest.  Not painful, just odd.  Then, around this time last year, it got bad.  The flutters started to hurt, to last longer, and to be between 20 and 40 per day.  My arms and legs started to hurt when I had the flutters.  Finally, one day, I collapsed and could not walk from the pain in my legs and (quite honestly) from fear that I was having a heart attack.

Obviously, I went to see a doctor.  My GP ran an EKG and found nothing unusual.  (Of course, I had not a single flutter the whole time I was there.)  So, he got me orders for a chest x-ray and an echocardiogram and an appointment with a cardiologist.  Hurrah.  Now, I may or may not have mentioned this before, but I have SERIOUS hospital issues.  Really, any place where humans are suffering en masse really zig me out.  I like places where I have a task to do that helps the suffering, thanks.  But a hospital?  Where I can’t really help anyone?  No, thanks.  Nonetheless, to the hospital I went.  And discovered that one has to make appointments for this sort of thing.  So, I went again.  And realized that I needed TWO DIFFERENT appointments.  So, I got the chest x-ray (yay taking your shirt off in front of people you don’t know in a room where they’re going to shoot radiation at your already-malfunctioning heart) and made YET ANOTHER appointment.  Finally, I came back for the echo.  It was gooey and freaky and this guy I didn’t know was about to put a wand up my skimpy hospital gown and this was seriously The Worst Day Ever and then I happened (in my incessant babbling) to mention a book series The Bear had recently convinced me to read.  Turns out, the aforementioned guy about to stick a wand up my gown loved that same book series!  We bonded instantly.  And when he stuck the wand up my shirt to essentially perform an ultrasound on my heart, I got to SEE what my heart looks like!  He explained each thing I saw and, not to brag or anything, but I have a pretty awesome heart.

Anyway, long story short(ish), I ended up hooked up to a Holter Monitor for a while, recording each flutter, and the cardiologist ended up calling while I was on Mission Trip to tell me that what essentially is going on in my heart is that, occasionally, the electricity in my heart runs backwards.  It isn’t dangerous or anything, just uncomfortable.  Anyway, the flutters still happen.  I’m down to two or three a day, when I’m not stressed.  When I’m stressed, they’re more frequent and more painful.

What’s cool about all this (because you know I don’t just write to complain, that’s not how I roll) is that when I am stressed my body gives me physical signals I cannot ignore which remind me, through pain and struggle, that I am beautifully, passionately alive and that I WANT to be alive.  And that’s worth valuing.  As Caproni says in The Wind Rises, “I choose to live in a world with pyramids.”  I choose the painful, beautiful, living world.

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Squishes

Posted on March 12, 2014 by chloebennett

I learned a new word, recently.  Apparently, to have a “squish” is to want VERY MUCH to be friends with someone.  I’ll tell you what, I get squishes like no one’s business.  I have squishes on The Bear’s friends.  I have squishes on co-workers.  I have THE WORLD’S BIGGEST SQUISH on The Bear’s sister.

Here’s the problem.  I’ve never met her.  I’ve never even had a virtual conversation with her.  We are facebook friends.  We follow one another on Pinterest.  Most importantly, I read her blog.  I don’t know if she knows that I read her blog, but it is a beautiful, sassy, honest, and I love it.  I won’t put it on here (sorry) because I don’t know how comfortable she’d be with that, but that blog has made me love that girl.  Between that and the way her brother loves and appreciates her friendship, I love that girl like she was family already.  But how does one handle that situation?  Do you run up to her the day you meet her and hug her (like a total spaz), because that’s how much you love her?  Or do you shake hands and say “It’s so nice to meet you!” even though what you want to say is “You are the most radiantly beautifully-spirited woman I have ever than the pleasure of meeting and I am honored to meet you!”?

Really, what my question boils down to is whether you put yourself completely out there, ignoring social norms and throwing caution to the wind, or do you not put yourself too much out there, keeping in mind the fact that the other person may be completely zigged out by you?

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Summer Lovin’

Posted on February 24, 2014 by chloebennett

So, summer is coming up.  Faster and faster every day.  Not fast enough, obviously, but also entirely too quickly.  I sat down last week and wrote up lesson plans for the rest of the school year (there’s some pretty excellent stuff on that schedule, too) and it turns out that there are only 14 weeks of school left!  But with the rest of the year more or less planned out, all I’ve got left to plan is my summer.

Now, for those of you who aren’t teachers who may think “Your job is so easy, you get a whole two months off in the summer!” I only say, leave now.  Just walk away.  Because I have neither the time or the energy to explain to you the amount of my heart, soul, time, and life force I pour unendingly into my job during the school year.  You aren’t there for all the days I am working steadily from 7 am to midnight, cutting endless paper circles or cleaning out pet tanks.  And you aren’t really going to care about all that, because you feel that you can judge me.  So, just walk away.

For everyone else, let’s talk summer.  Now, I know I’m gonna lose a couple of weeks to lesson planning and beginning of the year shenanigans.  I’m also gonna lose two weeks to the mission trips we take the Jr and Sr High youth on every summer (Did I mention I’m a youth minister?  I am.).  I’m also gonna lose one week to Vacation Bible School, of which I am the face.  Which is weird, because I really do none of the work for VBS.  Now, you may be looking at me quizzically and wondering how I can not know what I’m doing with my summer when it seems so full of activities!  And you’re right.  But compare those weeks to the rest of my year and they are a hilariously small amount of time.  What about those empty weeks in between?!  What will I do with all that empty time?!

Well, there are options, don’t you fear.  Obviously, I’ll be doing this.  I may also be making a Science vlog.  Or something.  AND I will be spending an excessive amount of time at various and assorted theme/waterparks.  And in between?  Who knows!  That’s the great thing about summers.  They’re full of sunshine, books, water, and doing anything or nothing.  They’re wide open and full of possibility.  And I love them for that.

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Welcome to Night Vale

Posted on February 11, 2014 by chloebennett

I don’t know if you’re aware, but there is a growing phenomenon on the internet where people are talking about odd occurrences, floating cats, glow clouds, and CARLOS a lot.  Well, I noticed it.  I saw it on pinterest, first.  Some guy, very dapper, pretty handsome, almost always drawn with lots of tattoos (I love well-done tattoos), and a third eye, right in the middle of his forehead.  And sometimes holding hands with Carlos.  With captions like, “Cecil and Carlos FOREVER!”

Friends, I had to know.  And if you’re anything like me, you’re thinking, “Are you going to tell me or am I gonna have to stop and Google???”  Don’t worry, I’m going to tell you.  A strange and convoluted series of searches later, I finally found a common thread.  Night Vale.  “What is this Night Vale?” we ask.  I’ll let Cecil answer that for you.  “Welcome to Night Vale. A small desert community where the sun is hot, the moon is beautiful, and strange lights pass overhead while we all pretend to sleep.”

It isn’t too much of an answer, so here’s a slightly clearer one.  It is a podcast, friends.  A brilliant one.  A podcast that is, ostensibly, the community radio program of Night Vale.  Now, The Bear recently pointed out to me that it is, technically, horror literature.  (Can a podcast be literature?  A question for The Cricket.  Suddenly there are characters in this blog!)  Anyway, horror.  Which, I suppose, it is.  There are monsters and strange phenomenon and people die often.  But not on-screen, as it were.  And I really don’t find it profoundly terrifying.  Just mildly unsettling at it’s scariest.  There are also people who find it to be comedy.  And it is that, too.  It’s got a lot of clever satire of political and social conditions.  But nothing particularly challenging.  And that isn’t why I love it either.

I love it because of Cecil.  Cecil is the voice of Night Vale Community Radio.  He is not unflappable, he is not heroic, he is not overwhelmingly special in any way.  He is just a man, doing a radio show in his community.  But, my friends, his voice is perfection itself.  It is deep and soothing and expressive and genuine at all times.  And his character is alive in a way in which most characters in movies and tv fall short!  And throughout the chaos and the terror and the politics and the mayhem, Cecil simply does the radio.  He makes his deep, expressive, soothing, genuine shout into the void and if it reaches someone, then that is to the good.  But if not, the shout has been made and that is enough.

And that’s what this blog is, to me.  I’m not in this to keep my family and friends informed.  I’m not in it to keep people I don’t know entertained.  I’m in it to sound my barbaric YAWP over the rooftops of the world.  And it is enough.

Update:  If you need a little YAWP of your own, and think Night Vale might be just the ticket, it lives here.

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Science Week

Posted on February 11, 2014 by chloebennett

Mother.  Of.  Mercy.

Look, I love my job.  I LOVE IT.  I love my life.  AN ABSURD AMOUNT.  So much do I love these things, evidently, that I need to yell at you about it.  But this month.  This month has been insanity incarnate.  This month, I moved one of my dear friends home to Dallas, started going on dates with said dear friend (henceforth known as The Bear), started my job up again after a delightful break, said goodbye to another dear friend after a (I think) very amiable breakup, and completed the single most exhausting and magnificent week of my entire life.  All in weather that, frankly, is foreign and wretched to me.

Now, I like lots of things about the winter.  I like snow.  I like snowmen.  I like sledding and fireplaces and cocoa and icicles.  I DISLIKE having to get out of bed in the winter.  I dislike showers in the winter.  My hair takes two hours to dry when it’s hot outside!  So, when I get out of the shower in the winter, I shiver steadily for a length of time that is probably not as long as it feels (a small eternity, I assure you) and can thus only be described as FAR TOO LONG.  This leads me to (don’t judge me!) avoid showers.  I am hygienic, don’t worry, but I do tend to take wash-cloth washings as long as I can postpone actually having to take a full-blown shower.  All of this is to tell you how very VERY much I dislike discomfort.  I avoid it.

But.

When it becomes necessary for me to be uncomfortable for the sake of others, I do not hesitate.  That brings me to this past week.  This was my school’s Science Week.  In which falls Science Day.  Now, this is my first year, so this is my apprentice Science Week and Science Day, so expect a similar post (but with more complaining) this time, next year.

Science Week begins with the arrival of our district’s mobile planetarium to my school.  No big deal, it comes in four big black boxes and one GIANT, overstuffed canvas bag.  Except, it came early.  In the middle of class.  Now, I’m not big on running my class exactly to schedule.  I am not organized.  (Note strange length of times between posts and nod knowingly.)  But this past month has been Planned.  Really well.  And I have been excited.  And, look, it’s been a little overwhelming.  I bit off a little more than I could chew.  But I was going to make it!  On schedule!  And then, the planetarium showed up early.  I had no place for it!  I had a class I was teaching!  Okay, fine.  No big deal.  Just put it in the front of the room.  We’ll work around it.

Then The Week itself actually began.  Friends, I thought I knew chaos.  I thought I knew exhaustion.  I did not.  Monday was fine.  Tiring, but do-able.  I spent the day slightly disoriented by the darkness in the planetarium, but ultimately enjoying the story-telling involved with teaching the Greek myths of the common constellations.  By the end of the day, I needed to go to bed early, but I felt good.  Accomplished.  Then, I remembered that I had to stay late to make sure the science fair entrants got their projects in on time.  Only til six.  No big deal.  I made it to six without wanting to jump off a cliff, but not by much.  What got me through that exhausting three-hour wait was the brilliant idea of telling each and every of our 70 participants how hard our assistant principal (a dead ringer for Fix-It Felix) had worked on that fair.  He had spent long, hard hours preparing and I wanted us to do something special for him.  His “thing” is wearing bowties.  So, I told them, we must all wear bowties tomorrow.  Be little Fix-It Felixes!  (Yes, I’m calling him that, now.)  They loved it.

The next day, we all showed up, bowties on, to face the day.  Now, friends, I knew this would be a long one.  But I did not expect 14 hours straight, not sitting down for more than five minutes at a time EVER (and that was only once!), and finding that once you get beyond the part of exhaustion where all you want in this whole world is to scream and cry until you pass out, there is another version of you who knows no tiredness and cannot find a way to relax, even after the work is done.  But, through it all, Fix-It Felix and I smiled, congratulated, and watched those little mad scientists show off their work.  And, my friends, I have never seen something that filled me with such pride.  And, after the science fair, at our Family Science Night (a night where the science museum brings out their planetaria and exhibits and a couple of demonstrations and turn your school into a free mini-museum), I watched those same little mad scientists gape in awe at the things they still had to learn.  And there I found my strength.  Yes, I collapsed in exhaustion into my bed as soon as the evening was over.  Yes, I cried a little when I had to get up the next morning and face a full day of awards ceremonies and teaching and youth ministry.  Yes, I am STILL tired from the experience.  But those kids are worth it.  Those 70 brilliant little minds, so proud of the work they put into their egg-vacuums and tornado-bottles and bio-gas and hover-boards make me absolutely certain I would do it again tomorrow if they asked me.

And I’d love every second.

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Where Have All the Christians Gone?

Posted on December 26, 2013 by chloebennett

(Let me preface this rant with that statement that I in no way believe that I am a perfect Christian.  I am flawed, in a LOT of ways.  I am sinful and imperfect.  But this is, I believe, something I get right.)

What happened to all the Christians who are fully committed to their faith, but understand that the definition of faith necessitates the possibility of being wrong?  Faith requires a leap, based on whole-hearted belief.  It acknowledges the possibility of being wrong, but believes itself to be right, without a doubt.

What happened to all the Christians who loved unconditionally?  Who hoped you would make the right choice, but loved you and respected you, regardless of your choice?  The Mother Theresas?  It is not the job of the Christian to judge.  It is the job of the Christian to hold God’s law and word (and Word) close in their hearts, to attempt to live that word and to share its good message with all mankind, not to deride people who have yet to see the Truth.

Christans have become the Pharisees of the modern world.  We go around, so assured of our own version of the truth and so disdainful of anyone who disagrees with us, that we deride, degrade, and even condemn and murder and lock away anyone who challenges us or our beliefs.  We should be so secure in our beliefs that no one can shake us, even when we open our minds to their opinions!  We should be so secure in our beliefs that we feel no need to silence other opinions!  We should be so happy with our beliefs that we glow and others can’t help but ask us what our secret is!  This modern Christianity, this grasping, desperate, frightened thing that claims Christ’s name, but not his values, is a (perhaps THE) great failure of our times!  We have taken the religion of a loving God and made it the very thing that this grasping Christianity most fears: religious extremism.  It is so incredibly sad to me that we have thus failed our family and our God.

But there is hope!  I have recently realized that there are Christians with respect and with strong, enduring faith, with unconditional love, out there!  The problem is, these Christians are very quiet.  We are held back by the intolerance of our brothers and sisters in Christ, we are held back by the intolerance of people who have been burned before by the intolerance of our brothers and sisters in Christ.  My quiet-Christian call to my like-minded friends is this:  Stand up, call your friends to the cause, let people know that you love them!  Tell them that you are a Christian and that you respect the heck out of them, regardless of what they believe!  Most importantly, love yourself.  Know that you are doing your best to do the right thing and that you are not alone!

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Nerdfighters

Posted on December 24, 2013 by chloebennett

Well, hello!  It’s been a little while.  I apologize for that.  Those few weeks of school…  Phew.  And I got sick!  The sort of deathly illness that leaves you miserable in bed while your parents are snowed out of your city and cannot, therefore, help you with your 104-degree fever.  Let me tell ya, kids, that was not fun times.  But!  The same ice that kept my parents from the city kept there from being school for those days!  So, I didn’t have to use any sick days!  Yay!

Anywho, it’s Christmas Eve!  My first Christmas Eve at home in a couple of years, which is pleasant, if strange.  You see, this is also the first Christmas full of grown-up children.  Well, I say full.  My brother has gone to Austin to be with his girlfriend.  Like ya do.  But still.  Grown people.  Which is odd, because there’s no dramatic coming-home-from-college celebration or anything.  And working right up until Christmas!  Who thought that was a good idea?!  Sheesh.

This last week has been extremely difficult for me.  I don’t know if I’ve mentioned my sugar gliders on here before, but they came to live with me in August.  Twin girls, and troublemakers, I decided to name them Fred and George (Winifred and Georgina).  They didn’t like me at first.  They crabbed when I went to pet them, they snapped at me a little, but some yogurt on my fingers very quickly made me their favorite person (apart from one another).  George didn’t like being pet, but for the sake of some yogurt, she’d even let me scratch her head!  And Fred, being the more adventurous one, let me scratch her belly for the sake of some yogurt.  But last Wednesday, they came very suddenly down with a serious illness.  The vet at the emergency hospital said they could not be saved and they passed away.  I buried them under a still-growing tree in the back yard that night. And while that was, perhaps, the single most horrible thing I’ve ever experienced, that is not what I wanted to talk about.  What I wanted to talk about were the things that have been getting me through this.  The first thing, that very night, was Harry Potter.  You probably remember the part of The Deathly Hallows when Dobby dies and Harry buries him without magic, using a trowel?  That was the only thing I could think of on the drive home.  So, when I got home, well after dark, I got a trowel and I buried my twins, without magic, using a trowel.

The second thing that has been helping me get through this is Brotherhood 2.0.  This is a truly delightful and wonderfully nerdy videoblog put together by John and Hank Green where they posted videos to one another every weekday for a year.  (You can start it here if you want to be as overjoyed as I was!)  It was one of those perfect and wonderful moments in which a lonely, isolated nerd whose co-workers tend to think she is a bit odd suddenly discovers that she is NOT alone and that there are people all over the world who might think she’s pretty rad!

The short version of this story, friends, is that nerds and nerdiness are what get me through my hard times.

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Doing It Myself

Posted on December 1, 2013 by chloebennett

I live in a place we lovingly (and less-than-lovingly) call “The Bubble”.  It’s a great place to grow up, because the education is spectacular and it’s safe as houses.  It’s a terrible place to grow up because it is full of snobs and the hyper-rich.  See, in The Bubble, we don’t have get-rich-quick schemes (if you’re not already rich, you’re not worth the time), we have get-thin-quick schemes.  Use this wrap, I SWEAR IT WORKS.  Try this new routine, YOU’LL BE SO PRETTY.  Get this surgery, EVERYONE WILL HATE YOU FOR YOUR LOOKS.  It’s all about losing weight so fast that if you blink you’ll miss it.  Don’t work for it!  You can just PAY for it!

I scorn that.  Probably more than I should, because I can’t afford any of it.  But I’ve known a lot of people who’ve tried scheme after scheme and not a single one has worked.  Therefore, I disdain them.  I would never be so stupid as to think one of those schemes would really work.

However, I am not happy with my body.  It isn’t just my weight (though I’m not thrilled with that), it’s the fact that I get winded walking laundry up and down the stairs five or six times.  It’s the fact that I can’t play sports with my kids (teaching, youth ministry, nobody panic, I don’t have kids of my own).  It’s the fact that I don’t WANT to work, because it’ll be so very hard.

Of course, this isn’t my fault.  It’s the Marketing People.  They have this really clever way of making you think you deserve that really unhealthy fast food.  I have had such a terrible day!  I do deserve that bowl of ice cream!  I’m so tired for working all day!  I do deserve that mac and cheese!  I’ve been walking ALL DAY!  I do deserve those pizza rolls!  Of course I do!  I work SO HARD!  Which, of course, leads to pizza rolls and mac and cheese and ice cream all the time.  Livin’ the life, right?  The only problem is that then, I’m stuck with the body that has eaten pizza rolls and mac and cheese and ice cream all the time.  Which makes me feel bad about my body.  Which makes me have bad days in which I deserve some more pizza rolls or mac and cheese or ice cream.  You see the cycle?

Now, sometimes, I do go on kicks where I’m going to get healthy.  I will do this thing for myself and my body and how good I will look and feel and be!  I will do it!  I push myself for myself.  And that’s good!  I’ve gotten to the point where I’m not doing it for anyone else or their perception of me, I’m doing it for me!  I do it by myself!  That’s good too, because I’m not relying on anyone or anything and I’m Miss Independent!  Right?

Wrong.

I’m not a me-myself girl.  (We’ve talked about this, right?  How much I depend on my family?)  I can’t do it myself.  But, on this one, my family is not my best help.  I love my family and my parents have gotten themselves in some serious shape in the past almost-a-year.  It’s REALLY impressive and inspirational and stuff.  But I can’t do it their way or on their schedule.  We just don’t think the same way about this.  So, who can help me?

I saw a friend’s post today on facebook about the fact that she has, in the past year, gone from a size 12 to a size four.  Most people, I would just blindly hate for their ability to actually lose weight (let’s be honest, we all do that).  But this girl is possibly the most genuinely GOOD person I’ve ever met.  And there, right after the picture of her two pair of pants on top of one another, was the very question I wanted to ask.  “How did you do it?!”  She directed we desperate masses to her blog where her story of tears and depression very much matched my own.  Her solution was simple: “Eat less, move around more, do what you love, and serve God.”  “Pray about it,” she said, “You’re carrying extra weight.  Give it to God and ask him to move you forward.”  She didn’t mean to lop off some of that body weight and burn it in church (although, now that I mention it…), she meant that we are carrying emotional weight, physical weight, and spiritual weight and that we can’t do all that by ourselves.  That we need to make prayer a big part of our workout and that God will take care of the rest.  And that’s what I needed.  My family can’t help me.  I can’t do it myself.  But God?  He can do it.  All I have to do is ask.

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Dear Old Dad

Posted on November 28, 2013 by chloebennett

I have a very dear friend who lost his father a long time ago.  It’s something we talk about on occasion, but it’s something that’s very present in our relationship.  He loves his father deeply and fiercely.  It’s a beautiful thing to see.

I love my father very much, but I have never been a “daddy’s girl”.  My mom tells me that I used to sit in the window at the front of my house and watch for my dad to come home.  I still get really excited when he gets home from a long business trip.  He and I have had some great conversations in the car: funny ones, thought-provoking ones, plain old good ones.  We’ve had some great jokes, some great stories, and some incredible experiences.  But I’ve always taken my dad for granted.  He’s always there, always helping, always my dad.

The better I get to know my friend, the more I appreciate my father.  Don’t get me wrong, I think my friend is an incredible person, strong and brave and no less for having lost his father.  But I am strong and brave because I haven’t.  My father has made me a better person, helping me through my life in his own way.  My father is quietly brave, a constant lesson in strength and courage to me.  And I am finally starting to realize it.  Without being morbid, I am starting to realize that my dad is a person.  A person who could be not here.  Not that I’m worried about my dad dying any time soon (I’m sure he’ll be around a long time), but knowing that my friend has grown up without his dad makes me realize that it’s possible to not have a dad around, even if he wants badly to be with you.

So, Dad, this is for you.  For all the times you’ve helped, encouraged, built up, and supported me.  Thank you, Daddy.  I love you.

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