I have been thinking a lot about my father ever since we celebrated Father’s Day together earlier this summer. This is by no means the first time that I’ve ever thought about what makes my father such a special person in my life, but I have been far more intentional about reflecting on him in the past few weeks than ever before.
Perhaps I feel urgent about reflecting on my father’s life and impact because he is getting older and becoming more and more like an old man. I’m not sure, I just know that I feel like it is important for me at this stage of life to figure out just why I love him and then to share it with him. Being a writer, my emotions and thoughts are expressed much easier in writing than verbally, so I’m planning to make a journal of sorts about my father and to share it with him on next year’s Father’s Day. The very first thing that comes to mind when I think about the way I love my father is how he has always been the best teacher. He is the one that taught me how to ride my bike without training wheels and how to catch a softball in my mit. He is the one that helped me with multiplication tables when I was...