The Perfect Family Man

My dad turns 83 today. I'd like to say he was in his 60s when he knocked up my mom, but alas, such is not the case.

It's probably been more than 100 years since the term "Southern gentleman" wasn't met with Yankee sneers and visions of George Wallace, burning crosses and shrill Neil Young songs. But I can proudly say that my father, a born-and-bred Mississippian with a heart as big as the Delta, is a Southern gentleman in the truest sense of the term. He is southern, he is gentle and he is a man.

I grew up thinking he was the perfect family man. In a family with the sort of dysfunctional familial politics that could give the Corleones a run for their money, my dad was a rare voice of calm -- or so I thought at the time. The older I got, the more I gradually came to realize he was a chronic worrier who carried on his shoulders the hefty burden of being the provider for his big, unwieldy family. Such pressures would give him bouts of insomnia and he popped Excedrin like Tic Tacs, but he always did his best to put up a good front for his kids.

He hated the worries to which he'd become addicted, but he loved -- loved -- his family. Blessed with a sonorous Foghorn Leghorn voice and a gift for self-effacing humor, my dad brags on his children almost to the point of it being pathological. Once I even received a letter from a complete stranger telling me how I was lucky to have such a proud pop. It turned out my dad had struck up a conversation with the guy while waiting for a pay phone at a shopping mall.

Nowadays he doesn't worry nearly so much. He retired long ago, the children are all grown and his health (aside from the inevitable hiccups of age) is good.

And on this birthday, I want to brag on him just a bit: After all this time, he's still the perfect family man.