My dad was a kind person....but I never really knew him even through he was always there in my life. He had absolutely no self-confidence....& he had no idea how to relate to people. He had managed to graduate from high school, but growing up, there were never books or news papers or anything that he ever read to gain any sort of knowledge about what was going on in the world around him....& yet when people would invite my parents over (which was few & far between & only when it was a social situation where leaving them out would be awkward).....he would argue about things he knew NOTHING about. I was always so embarrassed by him....I didn't want anyone to know that he nor my mother were any relation to me....I can remember feeling that way from about the age of 5 on. They were good people.....& my Dad when he finally was pushed after coming back from WWII got a job at Lockheed working on the flighline, fixing planes.....then got involved in working on the SR-71......a top secret plane at that time. He basically had NO sense of humor.....but then he really never talked to people unless he was in a group...& then like I said, he wasn't wise enough to keep his mouth shut about things he knew nothing about.....but I know that came from his father because my grandfather was the same way.....& far be it from me even as a little kid not to take on a fight......but mostly I just listened & thought....HOW STUPID!!!!.

I look back & think how sad that I don't have really GOOD memories of my dad (nor my parents as a whole). We did have some good times after I got married & after I got my degree & became a aerospace firmware design engineer.....but my dad was sure that anyone who went to college turned out BAD because it would destroy the mind.

We always took my parents on vacation with us. They enjoyed our winter vacations to Jackson Hole....my dad actually went on a dog sled trip after the previous year of having heart bypass surgery. I brought them along mostly because I knew they never would have been able to afford going to the places we went to.....& our daughter was very attached to them. I think my parents were better parents to our daughter than they were to me.....& my daughter saw them in ways that I never was able to. They actually took care of our daughter so that I could pursue my career.....so in that way I owed a lot to my dad & mom which was also why I felt like including them in our vacations was something very important to do.

My mother was so dependent on my dad for everything also....as she felt she wasn't able to see well enough to drive.....until I was 16 & didn't need her to drive any longer.....but she never went anywhere that my father didn't take her. With both parents who had no self-confidence....it wasn't a very comfortable home to grow up in.....& all I remember was the fight I felt inside to GET OUT.

I think my dad tried hard & deep inside he wanted to be accepted as a dad....but from his own dad he never learned how....& he wasn't the kind of person who could learn anything on his own by knowing what he wanted to be like.

Unlike me....I knew I wanted to be NOTHING like my parents & definitely didn't want to marry anyone like my dad.....instead I married someone almost worse.....but that's been posted in many other threads.