hbd, pops.

yes. you are seeing this correctly. this is a monster truck cake for my lawyer-suit dad, designed by my six year old little brother. obviously, his taste is impeccable.

today is your big day! and by big, i respectfully mean old. the big 5-0! but have no fear, you don't look a day over 48. sorry, i'm being obnoxious. i doubt that you'd expect anything else.

so in the interest of being less obnoxious and far more sentimental, i'd like to move on to more important things, like how awesome he is and how much i love him, i'd like to tell everyone a little story about him and why he is probably the best man i've ever known, with respect to joe and my grandfather, of course.

for starters, he is not my biological father. while that is another story for another day, it needed to be stated. you see, while our lack of blood ties has meant absolutely nothing to our relationship, it also means everything because of what it symbolizes. we choose to be each other's family. and we both realize how special that is. while most people cannot choose their families- and sometimes wish they could- we were given that privilege and each other. while he wasn't meant to be my father, he was always supposed to be my dad.

read more after the jump because it's a long story and i didn't want to take up an entire page with it. 


we met each other when i was a precocious little four year old and he was a new lawyer at the same law firm that my mother worked for. i had a penchant for informing him that he visited the vending machine too frequently and drank too much soda and instead of thinking that i was an awful brat (which i was), he was actually fascinated by this obnoxious and bossy four year old who knew a little bit about everything and wanted to tell anyone who would listen everything she knew.

so i talked and he listened and, truthfully, not much has changed in over twenty years.

but the next ten years get a little bumpy and confusing so i'll make a long story short: i'm twelve or thirteen. my mother is single. he is recently divorced. they date and we all sort of fall in love as a family and the possibility of a future together. but things get complicated and messy and unfortunately it doesn't work out between the two of them. but i miss him. and he misses me. after figuring out boundaries and other weird adult things, it's concluded that he and i can still be in each other's lives. he always wanted kids and i always wanted a dad. i had a father but, unfortunately, he wasn't a great dad. so in stepped my pops and the rest is history. my pops is my dad. and he's the grandfather that marlo will know. he's gramps.

woody allen once said that ninety percent of success is showing up. he was probably referring to making movie magic but i think that it's just as applicable to relationships. and this is why my pops is wonderful and one of the best human beings i know. he always, always shows up. the second that he decided to be my dad, that was it. he showed up every day, for every single thing, big and small, and for every bump that i went through and there were a lot of them. he was there when i needed him and he still is.

so not only is today that i celebrate your birth, pop, but it's a day that i'm extra thankful that i get to call you mine. while we will always disagree on the brilliance of baseball, how much fun monster truck jams are, and how influential winston churchill really is, i don't think we'll ever disagree on how lucky we both are.

we hope your day is as wonderful as you are. we love and miss you terribly.