Good Lifestyle

Among the many good fortunes of my life, I count the fact that even if some men did not even have a good father, I was blessed with two: my father, the original Hugh O'Neill, who died Too young over 20 years ago, and my father-in-law, Lee Friedman, who died in 2007 after enriching Philadelphia for Nigh up to 90 years old. These two singular men came to the paternity of the poles at the coat. And so, standing by their shoulders as a boy and man, I received a tutorial on the double helix at the heart of being dad.

My father great spirit, the patriarch of our Irish-Irish Rolicking clan, was sure to be sure, qualified as anger. And he was a certifiable genius with worrying paternal silence. But more importantly, he was also gifted with joy, possessed with a vitality that was in a mental manner, arising from his gratitude for a strong return, a good spirit and a powerful will. I remember a Whitman riff on the glories of the opposable thumb. "A guy can catch a lot with this baby," he said, flexing his thumb like a TV TV striking a miracle gadget. And catch my father did. With the darling of his youth, he wrote a family of the family - a sweet saga of seven children and seven million laughs, poetry and dogs and summer and medicine, baseball walls and algebra and Cookies. Above all, there were cookies. His life did not happen to him. He sculpts his passions and hopes.

He was enthusiastic, but no Pollyanna. My father was a soldier and a surgeon that Brio had been around the bloc a few times, aged fatal injuries and family's sickness. He was not floating because he did not know hard truths, but because they did not have the last word. He had a zest for all life - joy and sorrow of love, sugar and salt - and a kind of preparation for all this. After all, a man did not merge. My father shared his gusto and left us a feeling of our own agency, a conviction that we were not only qualified as the authors of our life, but also to be by our blessings. My father took a lot of oxygen in the room, but it's a little while. It was inspiring and exciting to be his boy. To date, every time I think of him, I can feel the wind on my face.

In the first aspect, my father-in-law seemed to be a smaller character, but he was not. Just a subtle. A chemical engineer and professor without portfolio, he was, in my opinion, the first world expert on fossil fuels, military strategy, geopolitics and love his wife and children. Technophile part, Sprite share, he possessed and exploited both an acute analytical spirit and a spirit of Gossamer. And here is the line that did it, I think, unique in our sex: Lee Friedman was the only man I have ever known who has mastered anger who is, God helps us, coded in the Y chromosome. Unlike My father, Lee was not in the doubtful battle with the world; Instead, he was talking to her. His wisdom was rabbinic.

He interviewed and proceeded, looking for symmetries and delights and leading us to what he had found. He did not need the spotlight. He was this rarest of men, a master of himself - modest, competent, generous, sweet. He beat like a river, irrigating our lives with a kindness and joy that were indistinguishable from heroism. Whenever I think of him, I feel safe in the harbor.

If the sketches of these men suggest that my father lacked sweetness or my father-in-law was lacking, I did not do the man justice. I remember a wicker basket in our lounge that each Christmas season was slowly filling with my father's patient maps, testimonials to his loving heart, many of whom suggested that his healing was so pastoral and medical. He said that most people were less sick that they were discouraged and all he had to do to make them feel better was to direct them to their achievements - most often their childhood children. And for everything you need to know about the strength of my father-in-law, consider this summary: he helped save Western civilization on the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944, has prevailed in the Roughhouse of business life , was the stone of his wife for 57 years and for the last five years, suffered the brutal fragile of old age with pastry. No, both of my fathers had all the arsenal of Male Desiderata. They have just written their dad symphonies in different key keys. My father was a prosperity of trumpets. My father-in-law was the section of the rhythm that made the song possible.

At my father's funeral, a woman with whom he had worked told me that every time she spoke to her, even for a past moment, she felt better, good, everything. "I thought that if there was a man like that in the world, maybe things were working after all," she said. I had the same feeling whenever I saw my father-in-law. Concerns are faded and the air is tasted sweetely.

The two men barely knew each other - they met by passing to my marriage - but their legends crossed in me. Although my father was not a lot of advice, he offered a pearl just before I marry myself: "Never leave your father-in-law seeing you flowing," went his wisdom. The laziness was the enemy, you see you . No father needed to see the man who his daughter has closed his daughter licensed on the couch, looking at the match. It looked like the right and God knows that I did not want Lee to know the truth of the lazyative on me . So, for a few years, every time I was at the Friedmans house, left on the couch, looking at the match, I would jump if I heard someone come and act as if I was just on the way to Hardware Get caulking to repair the shower. But slowly, he got up on me that Lee was another type of father. He sit down and watch the match with you. For him, I did not have to prove my dignity ; I was prequalified because his daughter loved me. He did not judge judgment, simply honor his daughter. He is not was not the center of the universe, you were.

There were a million differences in temperament between the two men, but they shared two chivalrous features. First, I have never heard of complaining about them. Not once, not through the toughest times. Either suck or solve the problem. And secondly, they did what men do the best, which starts at the service of women and children. End of the story. Period. I said the end of the story, Pal. It's not so long ago, I visited my father-in-law at the hospital. It was immobilized in a wheelchair and could barely speak, and yet his first words were somehow crystal: "Hey, child, how are you doing?"

If you can look like these guys at all, go and polish the world, my brother. Do not try to be both. After all, you are just a man, charged with the weakness to which the flesh is heir. But remember that the hard puzzle at the heart of the paternity and the only thing I know to be dead-solid-certain about being a father: sometimes, the children need a man who is great , who can fill their sails with his hope and joy that can lead them with his taste for life. Children need sense that the world is open to them, they are worthy of all this and, above all, to receive great love. But also often, children need a man with the courage to be small, who will report their strategies and respect their strategies, which will be calm and calm and there, because they find their foot and work carefully on their destiny. It's hard to know when to break your Inner O'Neill and when you have to present Friedman inside, but consider this idea guiding:

When he feels as if your child is fully needed by the exuberance of a man, challenge the thought with the possibility of opposition, that he needs the serenity of a man in a silent command. And vice versa. Your heart will find the right balance of being dad.