Happy Fathers Day...Hawaiian Time, that is...

Our Dads only want us to do what makes us happy...

Tonight I am going to write about something else. I was writing when it hit me. I was messing around with my photo editing software, doing some work for my little cousin, Kisha. You see, Kisha is very excited. She is about to embark on the most scary (first time on a big fat roller coaster scary), beautiful (because I saw what she is doing, and I know she is going to make this her work of beauty that is always in progress), thrilling thing in the world.

"My whole life, my Dad has inspired me...even Now." How important right this moment is, and we would not know what these kinds of moments are like without our dads. It is the very truth, as we know these days in our technologically sterile, void of contact that is the truth of us, that we are more inclined to no longer reach out to people, at least the most of us. I say much about the Brennecke Ohana, because they are my family. These people are some of the very most Loving, close knit family of siblings that anyone has ever known. Really. Most recently...okay, not like, recently recently, but the "addition" of the new "baby," of the family, who goes by the name we have always called him...yes...We....the Soares Ohana....the all of us...he's just Drew. When we are talking about families, I am certain that there is not another group of people with whom I am so happy to have grown up with than these people called my cousins. And I adore them and Love them all so very dearly much. The Soares-Brennecke-Petropolous-Dickerson Family has always been my most favorite group of Perfect-together Misfits...the Very All Of Us.

Kisha...The One and Only but Never Lonely Girl of the Brennecke-Petropoulos Bunch

Without Kisha's family...without her brothers....they are not her Step-anything, guys...just like Micah has never been, either...without her older brothers, Jim and Jeff, I have no idea of what real rock music sounds like. The Good Kind, that does not make you want to hurl the moment you hear the first note play and only is "good" to everyone for a whisper silent moment - this is what Jimmy brought, and the idea that I don't have to be bullied by anyone, ever,  always came from Jeff. Then there is my boy...my cousin, Jason, who is more like my brother...and, of course, Drew, my other almost-brother.

And then there is Kisha, the only girl.

Kisha and I are very close, just like sisters. We have always been. I can remember being small kids, running across the street to Booth Park, summertime, to "Summah Fun." Even as I visited my ancestral Home Land as a child as often as did my cousins, it was not always to my grandparents' house in Honolulu. But when it was, even though I cried to come home (I rarely stayed longer than three weeks, tops, without my parents. I missed my parents), I can barely recall having a bad time there. When I went and stayed at Nana and Tutu's house in Pauoa Valley ("Across da Pahk") it was always Kisha who was there. We fought like sisters at times, but at the end of the day, we loved each other still. This still is the truth of the Now. And yes, like she was inspired by her father,  John Brennecke, Ph.D, the guy who everyone knew as "Uncle Jack," I have always been inspired, in some small way, by my dad and his example.

No, not of his words, but of his fire. His drive. These traits I inherited from him, as well as my fierce nature...all from pop. I was asked to tell her story, and it took me a few days - til about an hour ago, while I was creating some things for her to use on her company Facebook Page, before I could see, through her story what I see, too, through my Father's eyes.

Through my Father's eyes I am seen as perfectly imperfect. Yes, I may be a bit to deal with, and sometimes, if the moon is rightly placed for it, I can be downright brooding and moody. I have never ever seen my mother brood, even though I know she does. But Dad? Oh yeah, plenty of times. So, since it is that I have been tasked with this writing, about this wonderful thing that my cousin is finally doing, and also, since I didn't know what to write for Fathers Day, I chose this blog post to say a few things at one time.

I am looking at my cousin through what I imagine her father sees, saw, has always seen...my little cousin is probably one of the most creative, driven individuals I have ever known. No matter how Arien in nature this woman is, and even when she was a little girl caked in mud from head to toe, screaming like a banshee, all the way to the day that she graduated from college, my cousin has always been my Uncle Jack's little Girl. There was no one like her on the planet, just as I know that, for as nutty as I am, and as argumentative as I can be with the man, and no matter how dearly he wants to save me from myself sometimes because I get caked in mud by the slings and arrows that life throws at me, in my father's eyes, there is no other nutcake on the planet who he is sometimes beside himself, usually laughing and shaking his head in disbelief at the thing his baby princess - me - just muttered. I know that my dad knows that I am who I became because in a lot of ways I am like he is, and Kisha and I are like each other in a lot of ways, and we both were inspired by the fathers who raised us..by the guys who we each call "Dad."

It is a father's lot in life to do his best at inspiring his daughter to become the person who she is meant to be, who is the realest version of herself that she can be, because no one likes to be lied to. It is a father's lot in life to show to his daughter what it is like to give respect and receive it as well, because Uncle Jack always told me, at least, that the only thing that anyone needs to actually get is a clue in life...because in order to give respect you have to be able to receive it. It took me a lot of years to figure out what he meant by that, and it was not until most recently that I figured out what he meant by that.

It sounded like "Tita, you only gon' get what you are willing to accept is yours!" and yes, it is the truth.

Kisha accepted that it was her choice to live her life, to be happy and to listen to what her Dad, my Uncle Jack, my dad's good friend and the guy who Kisha loves each and everyday of her life, even now, as he has gone Home to Spirit...she says it all the time....she said it to me today, in fact...

"My whole Life, My Dad Has Inspired Me...even Now..." says Kisha, when talking about the start of her new life as a brand new business owner. She will open Duds and Doodads this month in La verne, California, the very town she grew up in. Every time I talk to her, I can actually hear the sparkle in her eyes. But always, too, I know that she and I both can see her dad smiling right now.

"...you have to learn to receive...," said the Professor...

Yup...my whole life, even and especially through the times that I have not exactly been a gem through...my Dad, he has inspired me...even Now...

Happy Fathers Day...almost a week late, even....to all those dads out there whose daughters will one day look back, think these same thoughts....

I Love You All !
ROX