DocAndersen
My father was a great teacher. I took his class when I was considering a graduate degree. I also grew up having teachers, that my father had taught. I cannot tell you throughout my life, how many times a teacher said: “you are so lucky to have him as your father.” I was very lucky in both the parents I had. My mother was and is an awesome person. My father was a great teacher, and a great person. Both of them guided and shaped all of us. I do have to say; it used to bug me when people would tell me how lucky I was. Parents and parenting create a different relationship than teacher-student or mentor and mentee. It just isn’t the same, so taking the student relationship and equating to partnering isn’t fair.
I loved my father. He remains someone that I wish to become as good a person as he was, to this day. There was one place on earth that my father loved more than anything. First, he loved my mother, but Thailand was the place. My father often spoke of the things he experienced growing up in Wisconsin Dells Wisconsin. He loved the Wisconsin River, the works of Aldo Leopold, and growing up in a small Wisconsin town. But as he grew, and became a professional his love of Thailand took over. I remember seeing my father in 2005 after he had retired. He looks tired, as he ended his working career. He didn’t have the pop in his step that he had when I was little.
Then that January I saw him in Thailand again. The pep, the pop was back in his step. He was full of energy, and his love of Thailand came through. I suspect if I sat down and thought travels, there are places that love as well. I know for me Copenhagen is such a place. I have never had a bad experience in that glorious city, and I feel alive when I am there. I guess looking back I see the light in his eyes when he was in Thailand. I hear the sound of Thailand wonders in his voice. The pictures are of Thailand, from one of the trips mom and dad took there. They would spend the cold months of the winter in the warm world of Thailand. All of this to answer a question. Your so lucky to have him as a father. I was lucky, but because my father was a great teacher (he was) but because both my parents were wonderful parents.
Blessed is what I call it. Losing my Mom so early, my Grandmother practically raised me, she was a huge inspiration to me and then for Dustin as well.
I huge reason I am who I am was my grandfather.