Isn't it strange GreenEyes48 that we still love our fathers? At least I learned to love my father through the program. After I accepted, "But for the grace of God there go I" helped me to accept that he must have done the best that he could trying to raise my old sister and me. I mean how do you go from being a paid assassin in the military; Growing up through the depression And the to trying raise two children yourself after a divorce. I got to really know dad through rehab. I got to learn that he really was an alcoholic just like I was. But instead leaving his children with his wife like I did and not trying for custody he won custody. So I have no choice but to accept that he was a better man than I was. Like the poem by Rudyard Kipling, "You're a better man than I am Gunga Din". Dad was a man of principle and those principles were extreme. Stealing a penny was the same as stealing a million dollars to him. It wasn't the amount it was the principle. I always wondered how an Atheist father and Holy Roller mother had anything in common. It was that they were both extremist. Dad had extreme principles and Mom had extreme values through her faith. I asked mom why they broke up. I think every child of divorce wonders why they grow up with just one parent. Mom told me it was the alcoholism. She just couldn't take sitting in the car why he went into to drink with his buddies and play his guitar. Dad told me once that he had a chance to go to Nashville and play his guitar but chose the military instead. Mom told me that she always had to be ready for Army inspections and be ready to move when he did as he got shipped out pretty frequently to different bases and forts. I guess mom just got tired of being alienated from her own family and friends. I got to know dad early in life and mom later in life. It is weird growing up as a yo yo but you just learn to spring up where you are landed. Makes one real adaptable to whatever situation you find yourself into.