Harley

Having a dad around was sometimes like having a good day. Growing up, my parents seldom got along with one another which made it difficult to form a real lasting relationship with my dad at times, especially living with my mother almost one hundred percent of the time, but we made do. He would find ways to make it to my games when I played in sports for my church at the time. He made an effort to attend my orchestra concerts all through elementary, junior high, and high school. He even went so far as to be an assistant coach for whatever club football team that I was playing for at the time. No matter how hard it was for us to find a way to spend time together, we found it, whether it was going to Cardinals football games, heading down to Tempe for either an Authority Zero show or Flogging Molly concert, even just getting together to chill and hang out at the mall.

For a short period of time, I did alternate between living with my mom and my dad which was not ideal in the slightest. In some ways, it made it more difficult. Sometimes I wondered if it was more along the lines of my dad not knowing what to do with me or just trying to make it up as he went along. Regardless, we did not really do too much together or interact much that I can remember during that time and it made for a troubling relationship. At one point in high school, I did not talk to my dad for several months after I had decided to stop playing football. It was a shot to both of us, but I think it was a shot we both needed to take in order for us to open up to what it was we were really trying to grasp at in the long run, but we made it work. I worked more with my JROTC group with drill team and becoming a part of the senior leadership which made my dad overly ecstatic, especially when I won my first solo medal at a drill meet. It was a third-place medal, but he was proud nonetheless.

He was always proud of me whatever I did even when I went off to college. I was accepted to several universities where I would have been able to study aerospace engineering and that made him leap with joy seeing that I was going to not only go to school for something that prestigious, but also go to school for something that I was already excited for, but it was short lived. I had to change majors barely half way though and I was scared that he would be disappointed in me and he was, but only slightly. When I told him I was going to be an English major instead, he was upset that I was not following that that initial dream and he asked me, “Is this something you’re really passionate about.” I game him my answer and told him I was and he just said, “Okay, that’s all that’s important,” and we left it at that. He still asks to this day for updates on what I am working on and was excited when I posted my first story. He knows that being creative can have its drawbacks and that it takes time to gather enough of a following to make it worthwhile, but he stays supportive regardless.

At one point when I was in college, I got a call from my stepmom while I was at work and she told me my dad was in a motorcycle accident. My heart sank. I did not know how to react to it and I was speechless to say the least while my mind went into full panic mode. But after a few moments collecting myself and calming my mind, she was finally able to get through and tell me that he was okay and got away with some big, but not life altering, injuries. A broken pelvis, shattered wrist, and a fractured middle finger; small injuries for getting hit by someone going faster than you while you are doing eighty plus on the 303 at night. Seeing the pictures made it no easier to deal with though and was very humbling. A totaled bike sitting in well over three separate pieces, shattered saddlebags, and a helmet that looked like a spiderwebbed windshield. We all though that was the worst of it and that, once he healed, we would be out of the woods.

Not even a year after the accident, my dad gets news that he has cancer. Cancer that is treatable, but no less scary considering seeing someone go through cancer treatments at such a young age already when my great grandmother got terminal cancer when I was eleven. It was not any easier the second time watching him go though his treatments. The familiar yellowing of the skin, the hair loss, seeing him turn weak at the drop of a hat while going through chemo and radiation treatments. It was hard watching my grandmother go though it and it was worse watching my dad go through it all the same. Especially when he was dealing with treatments for a cancer that, during the same period of time, had claimed actor Chadwick Boseman. Nothing could be more humbling. Months go by, and my dad finished his treatments, went through his surgery and came out on top. Several months later and several doctors’ visits later, and he can officially say and claim that he is cancer free with no indication of it coming back and rearing its ugly head. A win-win for everyone involved. A man that has been through so much to the point where this disabled Marine Corps veteran still goes through each day with that big cheesy half toothed grin that he always has. But it is a grin that I love to see, especially when it is the grin that officiated my wedding.

His cancer is seldom the only thing that he has had to endure in his lifetime. His father, my grandfather, was a hardened Vietnam veteran who flew crops when he was back in the states. A man who was prone to accidents in his lifetime and crashed those crop-dusters enough to make a baker’s dozen. The last one took his life when my dad was barely in his twenties. His mother, my grandmother, was not too far behind him when she later passed away from a terminal brain tumor not two years later. It brought into his house, not only with me as his infant son, but also his kid brother who was still fighting through high school. So much loss and so much responsibility all taken in at once. It is amazing he did not go mad with the stress given he was still a young, fresh out of basic training Marine.

My dad was a father, a mentor, a role model, and one of the most influential people that helped shape me into who I am today. This man has survived what seems to be Hell itself but, like the Viking he embraces, he pushes forward and gives everything into anything that he does without holding back. It may spark some unwanted opinions on some subjects, but what salty, vetted SOB isn’t overly opinionated in the world’s affairs? After everything that he has been through, I think he deserves it, and that is only the few things that he has trucked through during the short life that I myself have lived. The man is an unstoppable force to be reckoned with and one of the strongest men I know, even if he really is just a big patchy teddy bear full of really dumb witted dad jokes. A man that everyone proudly calls ‘Harley,’ and one that I have no regrets calling ‘Dad.’