A true daddy

So many people are the victims of a broken home, and I am one of the many. When I was 3 my mom and my "real" dad split up they were young and had me young and it just didn't work out, about a year later my mom meets my soon to be step dad. I did not like him at the time, he was not my daddy, and I resented his very presence. As time went on my daddy does not come around anymore, and I don't understand why two new little girls are in my old room and there is a mean lady calling me names in my old house. Those nasty visits get few and far between to where I never see my daddy, and he becomes a memory. On holidays I would get presents sent to my grandmother's house, but he never showed, he claims it was to protect me from my stepmother and her family, but I think now as an adult he should have gone about protecting me in a different way than forgetting me totally. As I had mentioned my mom remarried and as my daddy shows up less and less, my dad starts becoming real to me. My step dad was the one that tucked me in at night, he was the one that would help me with my homework, watch me grow, and as I got older he was the one to help mend that broken heart that every teen girl goes through. But yet again , I did not realize that my dad was my dad, and I resented him for not being my true daddy, until I became a mom myself, all the things my dad had done for me comes rushing back, and I realized I had my daddy all along, and I had to call him and tell him I was sorry for being mad at him and telling him he was not my dad when I did not get my way. As I look back that look in his eye haunts me when I would say such hurtful things, but my true daddy understood and never loved me any less, he understood the hurt I felt for being rejected at such a young age by my father, and like a true daddy forgave me and to this day my dad and I are close.

I thought of my dad today because like my me, my son has had his biological father ignore him, and my husband has stepped up and been the father to him that his dad would not. It takes more than genetics to be a dad, and I have had two people in my life step up where others shirked their responsibilities. You know the funny thing about the two useless dads is they are men of seemingly upstanding positions. My real father is an elected sheriff, and my sons father is an Army Ranger, people walk up to my son's father and thank him for all he does, yet he could not love his son, or pay the ordered support, I wish sometimes these perfect men could be exposed for what they are deadbeats, and the true fathers be truly acknowledged, but by being who they are and what they do, the true daddies  are the ones that don't need to be glorified maybe a simple daddy I love you is recognition enough.