He didn’t need the thanks. He just needed someone to notice, eventually, that he already was exactly what the word father was supposed to mean all along.
I like to think, somewhere out there, my father eventually figured out his own version of that lesson too, in his own time, in his own way. I hope he did. I hope it made his life a little fuller, the way figuring it out made mine.
Either way, I stopped waiting on that particular hope a long time ago. I had somewhere better to be. A kitchen table. A Tuesday. A man who never once needed a reason bigger than showing up.
