calendar

I was looking at my calendar today.  I use it to try and keep up with my bills.  Also it is great for tracking my events and appearances.  I realized that Sunday will be father’s day. 
I do not have plans to celebrate my dad’s life nor do I have children who will call me.  I know many gay fathers who enjoy their children from  past relationships.  My dad died in 2005.  I did not even know he was sick. He was 75 when he died.  He had a long life.  He had lived through many hard times and raised 6 children with my mom.  My dad was born in 1929 in Robert Lee Texas.  I have never been there.  He was raised during the depression.  He said he didn’t know what a depression was.  His family was poor before, during and after the depression.    My grandparents were farmers.  They worked on another mans land for many years but eventually found work as migrant workers.  They would travel with seasons, working where there was work to be done.  My dad was the second of 11 children born to Armando and Guadalupe Trevino Flores.  Because they were poor, the whole family worked.  They had to in order to survive.  They were no real laws back then about child labor. Plus they were unregulated farm workers, who would care.  My dad and his brothers grew up fast.  There was not much of a child hood for them.  My dad said he went to school until about 6^th grade.  Then he had to work.  He became a man quickly.  He started smoking at 13 and continued all his life.  I don’t know too much about they type of work, other than it was hard.  When my dad was about twenty he started looking for work outside of the family.  The country was still recovering from the depression and some how my dad got a cash job running moonshine.  He told it like something out of a movie.  He said he was just a driver. He didn’t really know the people he worked for.  He just knew the contact people.  I assume it was better not to know too many details. It was illegal yet profitable.  It was best to make the run and get your money.  My dad married late in life.  He was 40.  My mom was 18.  It seems crazy.  My dad was working and living in California.  He became friends with another man he worked with.  This man would be my grandfather.  The didn’t like my Dad and mom dating.  There was a big age difference between them. Even today, it would be considered out of the norm.  But in 1969, the two wed.  They moved to Texas together and started a family.  My dad took a job working for an oil field supply company in a small town.  My dad was a father  for the first time in 1971, when my oldest sister was born.  My brother was born in 1973, then I was born  in 1974. Three more sisters would follow me.  He would always be mistaken for my grandpa.  I never knew what it was like to have young dad.  I would see all the other fathers coaching a sports team or volunteering for my elementary school.  My dad was always working.  My dad even worked a part time on the side for the man who owned the supply company.  That man was rich, and had a large new house and many acres farm land.  My dad would work at that the rich man’s farm in the evening and weekends.  As my brother and I got in to our early teens, we too would work along side my dad on the rich man’s farm.  The rich man would pay my dad extra if we boys worked with him on projects.   (Also just to mention, my mom worked cleaning house for the rich man’s wife.)  We grew up poor, but my parents bought a house in town.  I remember my Dad and my uncles, fixing it up and painting it for us to live in.   It was a small house, but it was our home.  My dad was not the perfect dad.  In fact he had issues with alcohol and domestic violence.  I know all the stories of his bad deeds in life.  They were some rough stories.  But he is gone now and I feel it is better to forgive him and see the positive things he did for us.  He loved us the  only  way he knew how.  To him a loving father was a provider, a teacher and a rock of strength. That was the dad I knew.   All of the caring and nurturing I learned came from my mother.  I chose to remember the positive characteristics about my dad.  Happy Father’s day.