Pop's day

I am getting old and cynical.
I have never liked father's day. My father left us when I was about three. Five kids he left for my mom to raise. Mom was crippled in her left arm. It just sort of dangled there. She was able to raise it and bend it, but the fingers didn't work and she was unable to pick things up or hold things with it. My dad was a loser! That is my opinion of him. The Bible says to honor your father and Mother. In fact it is one of the ten commandments. I find it extremely difficult to honor someone who did what he did. It was I who finally broke the ice when I was 22 or 23 and got ahold of him through his mother. I think we got together three times in the remaining ten or so years. His statement, "it's all water under the bridge now" really epitomizes his character or lack thereof.
Mom remarried by the time I was four. His name was Allen Cosens. His is the name I went to school with. So, until I was eighteen, I was known as Tim Cosens. She had one son with him. Later he left her because his son became mentally retarded from too much oxygen (I'm told) when he was about a year old with pneumonia. He left long before he physically left. He hid his shame in a bottle and beat us kids. He beat us bloody according to my older brother and sister. I guess he took out on us his anger at the condition of his only son. He lived for many years on skid road in Seattle. What a shame and a waste, he was draftsman for the Boeing company before he lost it.
Mom remarried when I was about twelve. This man is who I consider my dad.
He was a generous man that had been afflicted by Polio as a child. He was special to me because he married my mom. He was in some ways a hero because he lightened her load. Here was a man that married a woman with six children, one of them retarded. He provided for us financially and kept working hard and took us on several trips to places like California, Montana, Minnesota, The Dakotas and Oregon and so forth. His name was Ray Sticha (pronounced Stee ha)..
My wife and I named our second sons middle name for him!
Needless to say that I admired and loved this man because he was a gentleman. He must have been in love with my mom to put up with us rowdy, swearing, rambunctious kids. He was also powerful in his working habits and knew what was right and wrong. He was a good provider until he died when I was fourteen from lung cancer. when he died, I was very angry at God. I had not yet met Jesus and I remember going out in the back yard and cussing God out. Ironic, but I wouldn't have done that if I didn't think he could hear me, in other words, I knew He was there! I basically at that time told God to go to hell. Like he could do that.. anyway, my point is that I wanted nothing to do with God. Why would He take a loving man from my mom when FINALLY it seemed her life was getting good?! My mom had been thru two divorces and now a death to her beloved Ray.
It wasn't long and mom met a man named Bob. Actually my brother John worked with Bob at a restaurant and brought him home for Thanksgiving dinner or Christmas dinner. He never left, figuratively speaking. They stayed together for twenty years. Bob actually is who my sister Janet thinks of when she thinks of "Dad."
None of these men were perfect. Who is? Let him who is cast the first stone. They all have had impact on my life and on my childrens lives. They are all dead and gone. They live in my memories and in pictures. In a way, they all live on in the lives and attitudes of my children that I have passed on, sometimes knowingly and sometimes unknowingly.
Fathers day. Well, at least I had the plurality of it right!
Maybe I should be thankful for all the input they each gave unto me?! Their negative and positive influences have made me who am, for good or bad.
I have tried to use the lack of a father to make sure I was there for my children. I took them fishing, read to them, played with them, wrestled with them, swam with them, coached their sports teams, skied with them... Took them to church and prayed with them. I think the most important thing I did with them was to sit down at the dinner table regularly with them. Creating a home base for them. Instilling in them a solid foundation. I once heard it said that the greatest thing a parent can do for his children is to love their mother. The more I think on that... well, it develops in them a great security! Isn't that really what we all want? To be secure in the fact that we are loved unconditionally?
The ultimate father, the one and only one that loves us truly unconditionally is God the Father. He gave his only son to us so that we could live with him forever.
Thank you God!