Father's Day

My father was an Air Force pilot in the VietNam war. He was shot down over Laos in 1966 a few months before my 4th birthday, and Missing In Action until 1995. Only have a few clear memories of the man, but by all accounts he was a great guy. 
Growing up, I never had a good male role model in my life. Mom's boyfriends were douchbags, cheaters, drunks, and abusers. My uncle Jim was all I had, taking me fishing and hunting for a few weeks here and there. Still miss them both more than I can put into words. 
The result was that when my mother died of cancer (I was 24) there was zero knowledge of how to be a man. Some lost years ensued (decades?) but luckily nothing happened that I truly regret. 
To my great fortune I met Sylvia not long after the dawn of this century, and she helped me start healing. 
On this Father's Day 2015 I want to thanks her dad Jesus Cantu for welcoming me into his family with open arms and teaching me the lessons I sorely needed to learn. How to love and forgive, how to keep priorities straight, to have fun without getting into too much trouble, to teach by example, to accept faults in others and ourselves--there's SO much I've learned from my new DAD. Happy Father's Day, sir.

 

And what are the odds that he's retired Air Force, served in VietNam, and plays guitar, too?