Back to My Roots

I feel like there are a lot of fairly new readers to my blog. Some of you know me outside of the blogosphere, and some of you don't. This is ok. However, I feel that in order to truly understand who I am as a person, and as a writer, you need to meet my family. Once you know them, you understand me... and it has so to do with so much more than genetics. So, I'm going to spend the next few blog posts introducing you to the people that have shaped me into the person I am today.

We will start with my dad, who we affectionately call Pops.Everybody, meet Pops. Really, you can call him that, too. Everyone does.

Anyway, I love my dad. He just gets me, you know? We share more than just our looks. We share a sense of humor. We share our "colorful" language habits. We can have whole conversations with just one look. As you can see from this picture, I definitely look like him. We share the same coloring. I have his blue eyes and curly hair. We even have the same dimples. I remember once when I was about 10 I found a picture of him from when he was about the same age. He was wearing a baseball hat, and it looked like me in the picture.

A quick story to give you the essence of Pops:

Generally on Sundays there is a rather large crowd for dinner at my parents. We had an innocent with us that night (he later became a regular, but at the time was fairly new to my family). For dinner that evening was an elk roast. After we finished dinner we were sitting around chatting and the innocent at the table mentioned that he liked elk much better than venison. He stated that his dislike of venison came from it being "tough and gamey". Then, just being himself, Pops chimed in from the head of the table, "Yeah, and it tastes like shit."

Pops is the baby of 7 kids (plus a couple of cousins thrown into the mix). His siblings love him and affectionately call him Eddie (which, by the way, is not his name). They also refer to him as the "bouncing baby boy" even though he's well into adulthood, with adult children of his own.

Anyway, I love my dad. He's always there in good times and in bad. He's not afraid to cry. He's willing to help anybody, anytime. And he always pushes us to be the best we can be.

I love you, Dad!