I always believed that parents are supposed to dream for their kids and then when kids grow up they are supposed to take over the dream or revise it and then take flight.

My father was born one of three boys and a girl to a electrician and a teacher.

As a middle child I think he felt the pressures of doing the right thing by his parents (as all middle children do). As we all know the oldest always beat to their own drum and the youngest always follow the rhythm of the drum.

His father told him to become an appliance technician. So he became one.

His father told him to settle down. So he married a girl.

When he got into trouble later, his father travelled all the way to see him and told him what to do and he did it.

When he got laid off I remember him getting dressed up and going with my mother to go and register his business name and get his business license.

He decided to follow his own rules. He cultivated his clients the only way he knew how-with kindness. When he left that job, they followed. And so did their children.

I later found out that sometimes people did not pay him or they treated him with disrespect.

But, he needed to feed his family. He knew what he had to do. He did what he had to do.

There were times when no service calls came in, but he always got up (turn the music on to his favorite country station) and got dressed and started his days with a cup of tea. He would sit and watch programs with his foot cocked off to the side as he sat in his lazy boy chair; waiting for the telephone to ring. He always got dressed every morning, no matter what.

When I was little I used to ask him what he wanted to be when he grew up. He would just smirk.

Now that I am older, I sometimes look back on my dad and now I see the little boy. I have never seen a picture of him as a baby or a small child. But, for some reason if I think long enough I could picture him. I can picture his eyes. The eyes never stay the same, no matter how everything else changes. I often wondered when he was a little boy what dreams did he have for himself. I feel deep down inside not one came true.

The one thing that he told me and my sister was that always make sure we had our own car, our own house and our own money. I used to think that he knew how triffling men could be. I now come to realize that maybe he had different motives. I think that he wanted to make sure that we always had a way out. Always had something of our own that no one could take away from us.

I want you to do something radical today.I beg you.

When you see your father, grandfather, or uncle, I want you to picture them as young boys lying in their beds daydreaming about their futures. Wonder to yourself if they succeeded. Wonder to yourself if they didn’t.

Be gentle on them.

Wonder to yourself if they still dream. And ask yourself what can you learn from them.  What dreams may bring if you let them.

I write this on Father’s Day

My father always had dream for his family. I will never know what dream he had for himself.