Thread: A man has many faces, but we usually only see one of them. I had always known my father simply as “dad”. To me, he was at once fearsome & pitiable - he had been stricken with a chronic disease that left him unable to work but with a chip on his shoulder since I was young.

Death humanized my father for me. It was only at his funeral, speaking with high school friends who had come to pay their final respects after not having seen or even spoken to him for fifty years, that I could see him as a young man.

It was only in talking honestly to my mother that I learned he was a rogue, a lover, and a veritable cad. He was generous and jovial then, willing to give anyone the shirt off his back. A joker, a smoker, and probably a midnight toker, too. his was not the man I knew, growing up.

He stole my mom away from her then-fiancée after meeting her at work barely three days earlier. They eloped and lived wistfully on odd jobs and meager savings for years, drifting from place to place, slumming on the beaches of Florida the streets of Cincinnati. And then came me.

Anyways, just a short thread with some thoughts about my dad for this day. I hope you all had a Happy Father's Day!