happy father's day to the man who passed on the dominant trait of icandoitmyself. it's just been discovered and it explains so much ;) my dad is a geneticist and as much as i may try to fight it, the aversion to hire someone else to do something i can do, is not just being cheap, it's genetic. and i thank him for it. usually.
this is one of my favorite pictures of my dad and i. it was taken at his wedding almost 2-1/2 years ago, a very emotionally charged day! sadly, i don't have many pictures of all the construction projects i've been involved in with my dad, but that was kinda where i was going with this post...
my parents designed their second house and when the workers were slackin' off in the end, my dad fired them and finished it himself. it was an awesome contemporary structure on a lake out by the university. when i was a teenager and things needed to be added, like a floating dock with electrical power and raised wooden walkways, my dad thought it the perfect opportunity to "teach" me how to read a level, how to mix and pour concrete, how to run electrical wiring up to and over water (um, hello, safety?!), and how not to fall off a ladder (something he forgot how to do himself a little later in life...). that last activity happened only once before i, afraid of heights, refused to ever get on the steep-pitched roof again!! unfortunately, there seemed to be many opportunities to mix concrete on a saturday afternoon, when i should have been hanging out at the mall with my fiends :( somehow, dfacs was never involved!
anyway... when i moved north in my late 20s and bought my first apartment, my dad came up to see it (and help me with the demo :) and at first sight said to me, "what the hell have you done?" it was a dump, it was cheap, and i was so excited!!! i really didn't understand his question because he had raised me to think i could do anything, that i could do anything by myself, and that, clearly, i could call him and say "hey, dad, wanna come up to new jersey and help me rip out 80 year old pine flooring and toss it out a 3rd story window??!!" and he would say yes :)
there were many times when i have loathed the doityourself construction gene, but when i now have my own kids and one of them is planning to spend a week with grandpa building an extension on his storage shed, i know there are plenty of good traits and then there are some pretty badass traits like icandoitmyself that will continue to be passed down and it's makes me smile :)
happy fathers day, dad! i love you and i thank you!
beijos,
beth