Father:
This is sort of a new thing to me. Even though I was married once before and was responsible for two young boys this is the first time I felt a connection with the kids. Before my son was born or even conceived, I had a hand in raising two beautiful girls. When I first came into their lives, the youngest girl was 2 and the oldest girl was 7. It was really cool because they were both fun to talk to. The oldest would tell me about her day at school and the pure excitement she shared was amazing. It was always so fun to watch her tell me how her day went.
The youngest girl really didn’t talk much but she liked to play so I would try to play with her as much as I could. But having to work and make sure they had what they needed kept me from being able to play a lot with her. Especially when I started school.
Then one day I came home from school and was sitting at the dining room table doing some homework or research or something when my wife came over to me and gently placed her hand on my shoulder and told me, “Well, it would seem that your man parts work.” Honestly I didn’t know what to make of that at first. Then she followed that statement up with, “You are going to be a dad.” I was in total shock. This was something I had wanted but wasn’t sure if it would ever happen. I quickly jumped up and hugged her and tried so hard to show her how happy I was. Just wanted to scream it to everyone but she made me promise that I wouldn’t until a doctor said it was true.
One day I was out dirt bike riding with a friend of mine and we were having a great time. On the way home, my cell phone rings and it is my friends wife calling from my home phone. She was asking when we’re coming home because my wife was not doing too well. We rushed home and found my wife in the bed not feeling well at all. Sadly, that night, she miscarried and we both sat and cried together. It was one of the hardest days of my life and I can still remember every emotion that ran through me. Anger, hatred, and sadness. (I won’t go through each one because it pains me to even think about them.)
But I am happy to say that we didn’t give up and after nearly a year, we were blessed once again with the news that we were having a baby. This one went to full term and on April 13th 2008 at 5am we became parents of a healthy baby boy. We named him Haeden Joe Robert. Haeden, because we both loved the name and wanted it to be different than Mike or John or Chris. Plus as you can tell we changed the spelling a bit to make it even more unique. Joe is one of his middle names and that was something I wanted because it was my grandfather’s name and he is the one man that I grew up around for a short time that always showed me love and whom I loved back. Robert is the name of his grandfather and the name of my wife’s dad. Of course he got my last name because he will carry on the family name.
Now I come to the last part of me, the engineer.
I never thought I would become an engineer. In fact, I never thought I would do anything that had to deal with mathematics. All through high school I hated math and anything to do with it. Even though I did fairly well with it.
While working at a job with some engineers, I started to understand what was going on in the work being done and found that I rather enjoyed it. After some discussion with a few engineers, I decided that I could do what they were doing just as well as they could. But I didn’t have the education to get into it. So I set my sights on college. For nearly 5 years, I worked day and night at 11 week intervals. Would have 11 weeks in school and 2 weeks off then the cycle would start all over again. This went on from April 2005 will graduation in December 2009. I was one quarter shy of 5 straight years of school. During that time, I was laid off 5 times and we welcomed our son into the world. Never once did I take a quarter off or lose interest in finishing the program. The day I walked across the stage and obtained my diploma is one of the happiest days of my life. The only things that trump that day is the day my son was born and the day my wife married me.
Now here I am, writing this for all to read and thinking how lucky I am to have the life I have today. To think that I came from being just a poor country boy to what I am today is simply amazing. It has been a long road and I wouldn’t change a thing.
They say that every event in life makes you into the person you are and nothing can change that. Well, I will say that I am happy with who I am and people that don’t like it don’t have to associate with me. (You just knew that was coming. Didn’t you? HAHAHA!)
When I set out to write this up, I never intended it to be so long. But I felt this is better to describe me so that anyone that is interested in reading this can get a better understanding of who I am and where my priorities in life truly lay.
Shiyan sends!
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