Mr. Bill

So this year was different. Not necessarily because "the Don" had survived insurmountable odds, but I had found the perfect present. Yes, that is where my priorities lie after having grown up with a perpetually ill (oh no, not terminal, let's not ever be REAL in the family) mother, but because I had found the perfect gift. Yes, the perfect gift.

It is not that I am incredibly shallow; it is more so that I am constantly trying to figure out how I can possible buy a nonsensical gift to combat the fact that my dad basically saved my life two years ago during a horrible, no good, very bad divorce. But he did and that is what it is and this year, oh this year, I did it.

But I had to wait. So he loved his poster of "Man o' War" (as did my step-mother -- bonus) and he seemed content. But I smelled the discontent and I overstayed my visit just a wee bit too long to where my Dad began asking the big, biting questions. You know the ones, such as "Hey, I had such high hopes for you. What happened to your life?"

Yeah, those happen to me all the time and I find myself recovering with awards I have received or new titles I am about to earn through college. But this year I was finally honest. I knew what he was talking about and I guess, maybe he finally deserved some sort of answer or "conclusion."

My dad will go on a tirade of how he thought his "girls" were bound for greatness and quite honestly, he may have been on to something. Well, particularly with me. "You were a National Scholar. You went to Washington DC your senior year. You never let anyone tell you 'No' in your life. What happened to you????"

Yeah, so maybe Father's Day wasn't the best day or way to say this, but I have figured

some things out in the past ten, strange and difficult years of my life. I then slowly explained to my Dad what an awful, entitled, egotistical human being I was at 22 years old. I was horrible. Well, maybe not horrible. Oh, I was fun and I had a work ethic, but by that, I mean I just showed up on time and took breaks for stories over Rum and Cokes with other colleagues. I had no idea how hard life could be when you were poor, married, scared and had a newborn child and were too proud to ask your wealthy family for help. I did it all my way. And yeah, I did a lot wrong, but I have an eight year old boy who is polite and loving, so I did a lot right.

I spent twenty minutes going through this with my Dad, of why I may have indeed been a different person if I didn't marry my husband or become a mother at a ripe 23 year old girl, scared out of her wits. And for once, for my "Father's Day" as a solo, single mother, my father understood it. I spelled out for him what an entitled, confident, elitist kid I was. And the worst part, I didn't realize how much I was one. I explained to him that without the difficult path that I chose -- to raise my son, to help my ex-husband through school, to stay home during the day with my baby -- I would never have realized what the real world was like. And then. Oh and then my life actually fell apart. I divorced at 30 years of age while in graduate school with a six year old child. And shockingly, through it all, my Dad showed up.

"But Court, I don't get what I did wrong for you to make these decisions...to choose the difficult path all of the time...to not be great?"

And then I finally pointed over at my son in the corner of the room, on my Dad's fancy leather sofa, watching cartoons on the ridiculously giant flat screen TV and I said, " Do you see him? Do you see him really?"

And my Dad looked. He looked at my son, my beautiful 8 year old son who had been through hell for two years and my Dad looked at me. "I get it. You're right. Maybe this IS what you were mean to do FIRST."

I locked eyes with my Dad and nodded. I explained to him again how that child made me realize everything I wanted to be and everything I didn't by just simply appearing in my life.

And shockingly, he was the most important person to judge me. Once he got it, once he understood that the car and the neighborhood and the life I lead was for the one, mere mortal...my Dad simply looked again at me and said, " I got it. You did good, kid."