Happy Papa's Day

I started looking for colleges when I was 16.  I looked at UCLA and the University of Iowa. I probably looked other places that I don't even remember anymore but I do know that I didn't look anywhere within four hours of home. I remember so many of my girlfriends dads were telling them to stay close to home, that they would be safer and happier if they could come home on weekends.  My Papa told me find schools that taught what I wanted to learn and that wherever that was, home was only a plane ride away.

In the months leading up to my leaving for the University of Iowa I was asked again and again by teachers, coaches and friends parents, how did my dad feel about my going so far away for school.  I didn't really get the question because honestly, my Papa seemed fine with it.  I didn't really get at the time that they were asking this question, in part, because I was a girl. 

I don't have any brothers so I don't know if there would have been a difference in how we were raised, but I do know that my Papa raised me to take care of myself, to not depend on other people and while it went unspoken, that being a girl was not an excuse for, well, anything.

My sister and I drove stick-shifts, changed our own flat tires, used power tools, did yard work and were expected to do as well in science and math classes as we did in english and history classes.  We watched Monday Night Football, well, I didn't actually watch but I did sit in the same room reading a book while he, my sister and my mom watched Monday Night Football. :-)  We had to speak up at the dinner table if we wanted to be heard because when you have an opinion, you won't get an engraved invitation to share it.

He taught me one of the most useful things I've ever come across, that when something is broken, look at it and then see if you can fix it.  It is so simple but I can't even count the number of times in my life that I've done just that, and in doing so impressed the pants off of whoever else was in the room.  Broken ceiling fans, clogged drains, broken coffee pots and tripped fuses have all fallen in the face of the Carl Kukulka fix-it method. 

I'm pretty sure that my Papa does not consider himself a feminist, but I do know that he is a huge part of why I am one. In a society that (often) unconsciously expects women to be weaker and rely on a man, be it father, husband or boyfriend, to take care of her, my Papa (and Mom for that matter) made sure that my sister and I could take care of ourselves.

Feminism doesn't really have a place in my family because it's just how things are and I am grateful for that.  So let me be clear when I say that it wasn't until the you've-got-a-brain-so-use-it attitude that I was raised with, ran full steam into the but-you're-a-girl-shouldn't-you-call-someone-for-help? attitude of the rest of the world that I became a feminist.

You don't get to pick your family and I've been beyond blessed with the one's I was given.  So, just another long-winded way of saying that when I comes to my Papa, I think he's the best in the biz and I am beyond grateful for him.  I love you Papa, Happy Papa's Day.