(Updated) To My Dad: Happy Belated Birthday

I went home a few weeks ago to celebrate my Dad's xxth birthday. We had a dinner and we had a party, but I also wanted to write something....

xx is the new 50!

  

My Dad, Michael,  met and married my Mom, Dorothy, in the 70's when Afros were the thing. He didn't have a problem when my Mom cut her Halle Berry (back when we still called it a Halle Berry) and kept her hair in a super short twa. He liked it when she grew out her hair with two-strand twists. He still found her beautiful when her chemotherapy left her hair so fine that she could only wear it in a twa. And with two daughters, the only time he disapproved of our constantly changing hairdo's (from little girl braids, to relaxers, to my mullet, short cuts, to bobs, French rolls, my sister's first foray into locs, natural hair, hair dye, more relaxers, haircuts, twists, twist-outs, big hair and twas) was when we put "false hair" (extensions) in. I love him for never making us feel bad about the way God made us or our hair.

Back when he was xx!

Last year when my Mom died, I couldn't imagine what the future would bring. I didn't know how our family would get through it, or how my Dad would survive being alone after spending almost every day of the past 40 years with my Mom. But he's been making it, and has surprised me in a hundred ways...

I started working on this blog and my book, One Hairstyle, Thirty-one Ways, because I needed to occupy my time, and to do something that my Mom would appreciate.  I didn't expect that my Dad would want to help. But he did - he talked to me about my progress, and about natural hair, and he even found some styles that he thought I should try in one of my Mom's Essence magazines. When the first version of the book was done, and I was working on blog posts, every few days he would tell me about how so and so's daughter looked like she had natural hair, or how Mrs. So and So was going natural, and tell me how he directed them to find me on Facebook, or here, or to buy the book...

Thank you Dad. I love you for helping me with publicity, for getting me dressed for pre-school, for always being the father that would give a friend a ride home, for embarrassing me at the school dances by being front and center to take me home afterwards, for playing backyard basketball with me, and for always being there.  

You have read this articlerandom with the title (Updated) To My Dad: Happy Belated Birthday. You can bookmark this page URL http://twisthairstyles.blogspot.com/2012/09/updated-to-my-dad-happy-belated-birthday.html. Thanks!

Write by: Unknown - Friday, September 21, 2012