Prosaic Paradise

Campaign for the Mundane

Apologies for sap…

Filed under Family by at 8:49 am on Sep 19 2008

My dad just posted a bunch of pictures from his days in the Navy on his flickr.

Look at that amazing family resemblance! There are a bunch of the ships and various international destinations, and points between. It makes me understand in some small way why my father is so nostalgic and attached about the Navy as it was then. Obviously, the man who left Monroe, MI and joined the Navy because he saw that the guys driving their hot rods up and down the paltry main drag were basically going to be stuck there for the rest of their lives is a guy I can never know. The guy who went to Viet Nam is a guy I can never quite know. The guy standing in a Bangkok street in his dress whites… you get the idea. The guy I know is the one who filled up my plastic wading pool, the guy who helped me build a snowman, the guy who finally after weeks and weeks of begging let me use a small saw to cut branches to make “tree house” parts. The guy who got me an NRA membership as soon as I was old enough and took me down to the range to make sure I learned to fire a gun. The guy who I brought nearly to tears refusing to do algebra homework and being a huge disappointment for the first time. The guy I compared all of my boyfriends to as a yardstick of worth. The guy with a passion for his hobbies I may have inherited. The guy who worked his butt off to put me in good schools. The guy who treats my mom like royalty.

I am a product of a different time and I might not ever understand the guy in these pictures or quite think of him the same way as the guy I know as my dad, but I’m proud of him for having got through whatever he went through and become the stand-up guy he is now and who helped raise me, because no matter how horrifically we disagree on things, I still love my dad.

One Response to “Apologies for sap…”

  1. 1 Jenn P.on 14 Nov 2008 at 9:02 pm

    Thank you as well for sharing your story and pictures about your dad! It is amazing what they have done and where they have been.

    I am so interested in my own father’s progression through his pictures. While he is still not talking about it. He is including small notes on the ones he sends us.

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