Father's Day

Today we celebrate fathers.  It's my husband's first year celebrating as a daddy to our nine month old son.  As I watch him play with our son, feed him and rock him to sleep, it makes me think of what my dad was first dealing with thirty years ago. 

His first father's day I would have been a little over five months old, I'm sure he was as overwhelmed as we have been in this first year of parenthood.  Now he's a grandpa.  But even though I'm grown, married and have a child of my own, inside there is still a daddy's little girl. 

When I joined the military, I was scared to tell both my parents, but I was more nervous about telling my dad.  I had been going to college, but hadn't quite finished yet when I enlisted.  I was worried that he would be disappointed, but just as my dad has always done he had nothing but a sense of pride in what I was doing. 

The day I left for basic, we all struggled with goodbye.  I didn't really know what was coming, and they didn't know what they were sending me off to.  It was a post-9/11 Army and everything was already active in both Iraq and Afghanistan.  A little less than two years later I found myself getting ready to head overseas.  My family came down the weekend before I deployed and when it came time for them to head home, we all knew things were going to change. 

Fifteen months later when I redeployed, my parents were there in Fort Hood to welcome me home.  As the buses pulled up in front of Cav headquarters, I was scanning the crowd looking for them.  The first person I saw was my dad, who was standing on the field with a couple other individuals.  As soon as we marched across the field and the order dismissed was given, he was the first one to meet me on the field.  Nine hours later we would return back to that same field and he would meet his future son-in-law. 

I look back over the years and all the memories, the games of catch, fishing and camping, the practical jokes and the slightly off key singing.  I would imagine that his first father's day all those years ago that he probably imagined all the different possibilities on what path I would take, none of which are probably anywhere close to the path I took. 

But there has never been a moment where I felt like he wasn't proud of me and no matter how old I get, daddy's little girl is always going to be a part of who I am.