Dear Dad

I got back tonight from the bars, yes, i know it is a monday night, bud it is a study day tomorrow, so i can sleep in as long as i want then not sleep at all. I know i am very different than you, but i like to think that my best qualities, the ones that i love the most, come straight from you. The reason i am writing you now is when i got back, i felt like i needed something, something beyond the ordinary that has come to make up my life, my life that you and mom have been pretty much shut out of, but has become my routine, my habits. I know i have shut you out, but that is because our relationship has become one of praise or scorn, no middle ground, no time for talk, no place for argument. This is different than it was in high school, when i could come back from a night out at jon's or jordan's and you would still be up, and we could talk for hours. I would get back at 2 but not go to bed till 3 or 4 because you and i would share so much about life philosophy or you would tell stories about your life before me and beth and sam. My life has become something of a mystery to you, this i know because it was partially my inention upon leaving home to go away to college, something that i never would change, but when i made the decision, i didn't know enough of the negative side, the side where we would grow apart, as well as jordan and jon and i would grow apart. The real reason i think of you right now, at my buzzed state, on a tuesday as it now apparently is according to my computer, is because what i wanted most, what i wanted out of the ordinary, is a showerbath. I know you know what i am talking about. Memory is a weird thing, i am sure you could tell me 10s of stories, or even maybe hundreds of times that i would not remember, but i have some memories from back before i went to school that i remember step for step, thought for thought, action for reaction. I remember that i had many a showerbath in my time, but i remember a specific time, from before i was capable of bathing myself, from before the addition added a shower to the upstairs bathroom, that you watched over me while i took a showerbath. Afterwords, you put the towel over my head and spun me around, then walked me to different places, then set me down in my chair at the dinner table. I was so confused, but i loved it. I didn't know which way was north (a skill you have since given me that helps me every day) and that was so disorienting and amazing. I could have been sitting anywhere from the den, where i would have asked you to jump over the first hole in mario, to the living room couch, and it was amazing. It was the first time, and i promise you there have been many more, being in a new city and not being sure of directions will do that to you (rome was especially strong that way), that i have ever been completely disoriented.

I remember sometime in high school, either junior or senior year when i came home and you were watching old home movies of us kids. The one i happened to walk in on was me standing in our old (now two houses ago) living room. I have no recollection of the time and from how young i looked, it might be before i have any memories at all of the time. But it was the time that you taught me how to kick something. There was a ball among all of the other things you allowed to be strewn across our living room, and you walked me through brining my foot forward and making the ball move. Watching you watch that video, and watching the video myself, i realized how much you have given to me in life, and how much i don't even remember well enough to thank you for.

Dad, i love you, there is not another person in this world i would chose to spend eternity with. I know, from thinking about old conversations we have had, that i am in a similar place as you were when you were in college. I know that the belief in God has escaped our grasps. I will graduate in 374 days from college with the same major you had, although we went about it in infinitely different ways. I will thank you forever for how you raised me, how you talked to me honestly about Marquette High, how you consoled me on my decision to join SigEp here at SLU, and how you still play a strong role in my life when i come home from the bars and need something different, i need a showerbath