My Father's Daughter: Excerpt
Excerpt
I am my father’s oldest daughter, Linda. I did not grow up with my dad. However, as I got to know him later in life and spend quality time with him, I realized that his genes had grown up in me because we shared so many traits: the directness, the assertiveness, the zero tolerance for nonsense, the same authoritarian approach to administration (since we both had worked as administrators), the fierce independence and the inclination to take charge of a situation. Some may argue that these are not necessarily all wonderful qualities. Well, as my dad would often say, “For everything, there is a positive and a negative aspect attached to it.”
My father believed in planning ahead, no matter how rosy the present might look. When I mentioned to him that I was thinking about retiring in a few years, he asked me what I was planning to do after retirement. When I could not come up with a definite answer, he stressed to me in, no uncertain terms, how critical it was to have a post-retirement plan in place. He said, “If you don’t have anything to do after retirement, you might just develop Alzheimer’s and go away.” So, even after I became eligible, I was afraid to retire at first because I had not decided on a vocation following retirement. After a couple of years of being eligible, I
decided that I would go ahead and retire anyway and focus on international travel and professional consulting in my area of expertise—reading education, and maybe even start my own school, which he thought was highly ambitious given my age.
One of the projects that my father embarked on in his post-retirement years was the building of a personal care home. He said that he was also including a room for himself there to be used in the future. He worked on it day and night. He said that people in the neighborhood would pass by mocking him— just as they did Noah in the Bible when he was building the ark. With a serious look on his face, he asked me if I had thought about my long- term care. I was in my forties then and had not thought about it at all. Years later, however, I purchased a long-term care insurance policy because of his influence.
My father was a sun man. In my first semester as a freshman in college, the professor of my college orientation class approached us (I mean literally getting in our faces and scaring us half to death with his large bulging eyes) during the first week of class and asked in his baritone voice, “Are you a moon woman or a sun woman? Are you a moon man or a sun man?” Then he explained that the moon has no light of its own; it reflects the light of the sun. The sun makes its own light. So, if you are a moon person, you will try to be around whoever else is popular or has a large following, hoping that some of their light will shine on you. However, if you are a sun person, you make your own light. I decided right away that I was going to be a sun woman. If you knew my dad, you know that he was a man who lived by his own rules. It did not matter to him what anybody else thought about his actions, his opinions, or his way of doing things. If what he was doing made sense to him, he was fine with it. He relied on his own judgment.
My father had his own imprint. On one visit, he took me around to see some of his properties. We happened to go to one of his houses that he was renovating. He pulled out a cabinet drawer in the kitchen and pointed out how he had inlaid it with tile instead of the usual material. He said, “I call this giving it the Hill touch.” He also pointed out a piece of woodwork that he had carved a design in to place over the living room windows. Like my father, I hope that my work has had its own imprint. As a former college professor, I hope that I have left my imprint on those I prepared to become teachers.
I want to thank you, Dad, for siring me into the world. I am proud to be your offspring. REST in PEACE.
My father believed in planning ahead, no matter how rosy the present might look. When I mentioned to him that I was thinking about retiring in a few years, he asked me what I was planning to do after retirement. When I could not come up with a definite answer, he stressed to me in, no uncertain terms, how critical it was to have a post-retirement plan in place. He said, “If you don’t have anything to do after retirement, you might just develop Alzheimer’s and go away.” So, even after I became eligible, I was afraid to retire at first because I had not decided on a vocation following retirement. After a couple of years of being eligible, I
decided that I would go ahead and retire anyway and focus on international travel and professional consulting in my area of expertise—reading education, and maybe even start my own school, which he thought was highly ambitious given my age.
One of the projects that my father embarked on in his post-retirement years was the building of a personal care home. He said that he was also including a room for himself there to be used in the future. He worked on it day and night. He said that people in the neighborhood would pass by mocking him— just as they did Noah in the Bible when he was building the ark. With a serious look on his face, he asked me if I had thought about my long- term care. I was in my forties then and had not thought about it at all. Years later, however, I purchased a long-term care insurance policy because of his influence.
My father was a sun man. In my first semester as a freshman in college, the professor of my college orientation class approached us (I mean literally getting in our faces and scaring us half to death with his large bulging eyes) during the first week of class and asked in his baritone voice, “Are you a moon woman or a sun woman? Are you a moon man or a sun man?” Then he explained that the moon has no light of its own; it reflects the light of the sun. The sun makes its own light. So, if you are a moon person, you will try to be around whoever else is popular or has a large following, hoping that some of their light will shine on you. However, if you are a sun person, you make your own light. I decided right away that I was going to be a sun woman. If you knew my dad, you know that he was a man who lived by his own rules. It did not matter to him what anybody else thought about his actions, his opinions, or his way of doing things. If what he was doing made sense to him, he was fine with it. He relied on his own judgment.
My father had his own imprint. On one visit, he took me around to see some of his properties. We happened to go to one of his houses that he was renovating. He pulled out a cabinet drawer in the kitchen and pointed out how he had inlaid it with tile instead of the usual material. He said, “I call this giving it the Hill touch.” He also pointed out a piece of woodwork that he had carved a design in to place over the living room windows. Like my father, I hope that my work has had its own imprint. As a former college professor, I hope that I have left my imprint on those I prepared to become teachers.
I want to thank you, Dad, for siring me into the world. I am proud to be your offspring. REST in PEACE.
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