Real Men: Part One

One of the reasons, I think, for why I have such great relationships with men is the wonderful men who were around me as I grew up. These are the men who showed me what men really are: hard but soft, strong but nurturing, confident but humble. I have been very blessed by the power of the universe to have had men like this in my life. It is because of them that I am so confident in my intelligence, my sense of fun, my ability to analyze, and my attractiveness. They've made it impossible for me to settle for just any man. And for that I am forever thankful. As a way of paying tribute to them, I am blogging a multi-part series about all the great men I've known and still know.

First up, the men who taught me what men ought to be. And what better way to start than with the best man ever born.

Daddy

I've discussed Daddy before. Daddy is the man to whom no man will ever be able to measure up. He's the reason that I never wanted to marry. He's the man who, after they made him, was so perfectly wrought that they broke the mold. I knew, from a very very early age, that he was one of a kind and I would never find anyone exactly like him. And so I settled it in my mind that, if I couldn't have one just like him, I didn't want any of them.

He was the hardest working person I've ever known. He worked a tough job in a tough industry, the steel industry. He worked in that seamless mill, walking miles and miles and miles every day, inspecting those long piles of pipe. He worked any one of three shifts 6 or 7 days a week in that mill for well over 40 years. He was injured by rolling pipe numerous times and saw several co-workers killed. He hated his job but he never complained and never called off because he felt that he had a mission in life: to do his best for his wife and children. He regretted his lackadaisical attitude after the war, when he started work in the mill because he was just having too much fun to go to college on the GIBill, that he could do it any time later. And then he married my mom and started having all those kids and...well, later never came. In fact, the money became so tight after three were born that he took on a second job: digging graves at his friend, Tom's, cemetary to make extra money. It, too, was backbreaking work that he did in his "spare" time for the next 30 years. And, again, he never complained. Never once.

Despite all that work, he was intimately involved in our lives. He proudly supported my mom's decision to go back to college when the youngest of us was finally in kindergarten and he was more proud of my mom's subsequent career in journalism than even she was. He never missed one of my swim meets (unless he was working second shift) or my older sister's gymnastic meets or my younger sister's cheerleading competitions or either of my brothers' basketball or baseball games. He'd watch every Steeler game with Patty and I, every Pirate game with DeeDee, and every Pitt game with my brother Bill. When MC went to Penn State, he became a Nittany Lion. When I went to Pitt, he gleefully veered back to Panther territory. He was especially happy to discover another history/politics buff in the family in me. We spent hours watching documentaries and movies, reading books, and having discussions about all of it. He checked out every guy each of us girls ever dated and never forbid us from any of them. He would act intimidating toward them, see how they handled it, and then (very subtly) point out to us their reactions. He never liked the guys who completely backed down from him. He liked a guy that was polite but confident. We Gray girls like our men strong as a consequence.

He showed all of us how a man loves a woman through his love for my mom. They were sexy and didn't mind letting us know that they were. I knew my parents had a good sex life before I even knew what that was. It was evident and it was in the air all the time. My dad was always touching my mom. A hand touching her elbow, a pat on the ass when they thought no one was looking, his hand on her leg under a restaurant table. He never left a room before kissing her. They almost became electric around each other and I often think now about how they must have struggled to keep it all under control. And, amazingly, that never wore off. No matter how they aged, no matter how depleted my mother became in the throes of cancer, he never looked at her or spoke of her but as the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen.

Thanks to Daddy, I am a woman who knows football, politics, history, and war tactics. I can tell you about the development of the B-52, the Elizabethan age, and how to use a map. I can demonstrate how to shoot a gun and how to change the oil in your car. And I was told by the strongest and most manly of men every day that men are the weaker sex.

Daddy, I miss you every single day. Forever.

Up next: Mike, my godfather.