My Dad and I

I love the concept of the daughter being the apple of her father's eye. Or in my case, her stepfather. I was certainly his little girl. My biological father died when I was a month old in active-duty combat in Iraq, shortly after the invasion of Iraq was ordered by the Bush administration post-9/11. If you can't already tell, I'm very much American. Born and raised. My biological father passing away when I was that young, before I even got a chance to know him, left a mark on me that I can't even begin to describe. It's funny how you can miss someone so terribly, when that someone is a person you've never even met and won't meet until Heaven comes to take you home. That kind of pain, that seemingly never-ending chasm between you two, is unimaginable and unexplainable.

My stepfather came into my life before I even had a chance to go a single Christmas or birthday without my biological father. I was very blessed indeed, and so were my two older brothers. We had a younger brother added to our family not long after my stepfather married my mum (my Mum's Australian), and in 2011, we stepped completely away from military life and moved to Australia.

Fastforward a couple of years. My adolescence brought with it a wave of new rebelliousness, wanting to seek my own sense of freedom that I didn't really have while being a military kid. Always being caught in a rigorous lifestyle, never knowing if one of your parents is going to come home from a deployment in Afghanistan or Iraq (my mum was a stay-at-home mum so we were homeschooled all of our lives), it really does things to you. It really moulds your thinking. For me, the super-strict routines never really stuck, and I hated it. While I'm not super close with my dad these days, as I've moved away to the mainland of Australia to undertake university, my dad made my life better in a lot of ways. He taught me everything I know now about writing, gave me an obsession for history (specifically American history), and nurtured my passions for classic literature and my love of valiant knights, fierce dragons, and fair maidens. He was the person I read the Chronicles of Narnia and the Lord of the Rings with. We read the Diary of Anne Frank together. Tried to read Oliver Twist without much success due to the content material.

My dad loves Mexican food, and enjoys when I make my taco salad. He loves The Hobbit movies more than the Lord of the Rings, and his favourite Chronicles of Narnia book is The Horse and His Boy. He really likes boogie boarding at the beach, even when it's freezing cold in the middle of July. He's allergic to horses and cats, but he always was supportive of my weekly horse-riding lessons. He delighted in my writing skills and tried to support my fanfiction writing as much as possible, even when he didn't understand quite what it was. He always made-up funny stories to go with playing our Lego, and he helped teach me how to drive. He loves travelling, and we're planning to go to New Zealand soon to see where Middle Earth was filmed for Lord of the Rings. My dad nurtured my childhood as best as he could. I'd imagine it was very difficult with really only knowing how to raise boys (I have three brothers), but even so, he found ways to connect with me, while teaching me everything I know about the world. Though there's still that sense that he grieves for the little girl that I once was, who loved horses and fluffy fantasy books (I'm still into horses, I just prefer dark romance and YA fiction now), he's still supportive, in his own way.

And I'm sure that my biological dad would be just as proud of me, watching up there from heaven, seeing how I'm doing. Both my dads have shown me incredible things about this world. My biological dad showed me that death is not the end of us. That heaven is a very real thing. His death strengthened my faith in God and persuaded me to ask questions about my faith. My biological dad became a hero in my life.

My stepdad (who we call Dad) taught me about the world around me. He taught me how to stay safe, how to stay strong and how to keep a fighting spirit. My dad showed me how a man should respect a woman, protect her, cherish her and fight for her. My favourite quotable line from my dad to this day is, "There is no woman a man will treat better than his mother." Despite the circumstances which led my stepdad into my life, and as perfectly imperfect as he is, I still love him very much. The scars left over from having never known him still hurt, and they always will. I don't expect them to get any better. But I am very much blessed to have my dad in my life, and I will cherish that for as long as I live.