Hello Community! Every year on or around Good Friday, I try to post something about my Dad, who died in 2020 on Good Friday.

Today, I’m remembering working in the garden with him. When Dad came home from work, smelling of sandwich meats stuffed in his sport coat pockets and operating room sweat, I’d feel like my inside pieces realigned. He’d drive up, speeding to a sudden stop in the long driveway. His seat was fully back, and his knees were still just shy of knocking the dashboard—news or sports blaring on the AM radio. He’d come through the door whistling, always whistling. I’d sense him if I didn’t hear him and spring out to his location like our dog Cleo. We’d go straight to the garden most days—him whistling, and me jabbering. Somehow, I felt heard even though he whistled most of the time or hummed. He would move water lines, squish snails (“I have a personal fight with snails. It’s just between me and them.” i.e., no poisons, just shoes and thumb-to-forefinger), and pick fruit, marveling at the sweetness of the bird-pecked figs and sapote. He was patient with life, including me, even though he was always active—a character, a treasure.

Now, in my 50s, I look back on my own children and wonder what they’d say about their own memories growing up. And I have to stop myself from one thought trail or another, because it’s comparisons again, and those aren’t good for anyone. I objectively was never this gentle giant who my dad was to me. But, One, this is not the same as remembering. And Two, acknowledging with transparency, my own shortcomings that inevitably burble to the surface is not the same harmful exercise that comparisons is. Last night, reading the “blessings” that Jacob gave to his 12 sons when Jacob was dying was kind of like that—with transparency, but also with presence, he blessed. He named their mistakes and flaws within the safety of what only a parent’s large grasp can hold, and that in itself was its own kind of blessing. “I see you.” It was not a gloss-over blessing, superficial and averting the gaze. It was eyes open, seeing, and still holding. The shortcomings we live into the lives of our loved ones, inevitably human—we either remain, or we escape into a type of transactional exchange: “This is what I give you, and as long as you give me this back, I’ll remain. If you misbehave, I’ll not.”

So, as I remember my sweet Dad, I remember also my own flawed parenting, and I remember that I am, One, forgiven. Two, so grateful for Dad and my children, and I’m leaning in, in my 50s. Still here. Valued not by performance, but by more than metrics.

I remember once, when my dad was not well, he took the keys when I asked him not to. Dad drove away to go wrap his car around a pole, break his neck, and drag all of us through the sequelae. In that moment there was no calculation, just a pull toward him. What I remember then, like Jacob blessing his 12 horribly behaved sons, was that while seeing the blood all over his beat-up body and his car split in two, I loved Dad so much and wanted him, any way he came. The good and the bad together, inevitably human. Extraordinarily forgiven. Like me. Like you.

Self-care tip: Stay present with what is in front of you today, without measuring it against anything else.

Question: How are you being seen and held in safe transparency?