Sandy Peisner MDI Contributor
My father had five sons.
We were all born within six years from the oldest to the youngest.
He loved throwing a football to us. Shooting hoops with us. Going to little league games. He was a wonderful father.
Not perfect though. My brother Eric and I were having a “furious verbal conversation,” let’s call it. It was full of swearing and anger. I didn’t realize my mother was behind me.
Hearing our loud angry voices my father came to investigate. He saw us arguing with my mother beside us. I felt a tap on my shoulder … and then I was on the ground. My father had punched me.
My mother screamed, “What are you doing? Why did you hit him?” Eric of course had fled the scene.
My father bellowed out, “He can’t talk to you that way!”
She replied he was fighting with Eric. I responded, “I bet you feel big – a 42-year-old man hitting a 13-year-old boy.”
Years later my father told me he never felt so small in his life.
But that experience couldn’t change him in my mind. He was and will always be bigger than life. I wish he would have met his granddaughter, my child. But he never got that chance.
He was wonderful and I miss him.