My Dad is turning 75.

My dad is Bill Rese. 


You won’t be able to search for him anywhere on the Internet, because he’s a quiet, unassuming kinda guy. 

But he deserves a shout-out, so here goes…

I know this blog is supposed to be about Maia and all things genetic, but well, if this isn’t about genetics, I don’t know what is. 

 My Dad has had a huge influence on me.

I have all these awesome qualities (so I like to think). I am a decent cook, love to travel, am crazy about dogs, have tons of energy and love a good adventure.

I got all that, and more, from my Dad.


This guy is turning 75 on Monday.

Because of COVID, I am not going down south to visit him right now for this amazing milestone. He’s not coming up to help me celebrate turning 50 next month, either. 

I need everyone to know about him so you can understand me.

In my entire 50 years, he is probably the ONLY person who has NEVER said a bad word about me (not like I haven’t deserved it once in a while…. but he has been constant). He is my biggest cheerleader. You know when you tell someone something, and you are so excited and breathless from it, and when you tell that person you can hear in their voice how their breathing gets a bit faster, and their tone gets a bit higher – sounding like pride mixed with surprise, and you know they are as over the moon about whatever you are doing as much as you are? Yeah, he’s that guy. 

He told me last weekend when I was sharing a few things with him about what I was doing (the upcoming book and a few other things I have in the works) how proud he was. He told me, with a silly old man giggle, “You’re famous!” (I’m not, but he thinks I rock, and I love that.)

When I was a kid, my Dad took our family everywhere. He’d bring out those glossy vacation guides in the fall and ask us where we wanted to go. Florida, almost always – because he loved fireworks and coasters and music and laughter and building sandcastles on the beach, and so now I do, too.


No matter how old I get, I’m still the girl who hated vegetables (but now I’m growing them and am as excited about my tiny garden as he is at his acres large garden). I’m the girl who loved Kraft Dinner (and still cannot keep up to his bread-making, soup making or homemade sushi skills). I mean, people ask my Dad to make them food! He’s the best cook who never took a class. Did you know he used to knit? Icelandic sweaters. And sold them. And he loves baseball and hockey. You can be a REAL man and knit and cook, too.


My Dad still tells stories (every. single. visit) about how he let me go to Russia on a school trip when it was still part of the USSR. He always tells the story about how he snuck me to go parasailing in Mexico that time when I was 15 (against my mother’s wishes because she was afraid something would happen to me). He’s always encouraged my desires and my curiosity. He’s travelled the world, and that is where my love for travel has come as well. He was over the moon happy about our adoption trips to China. 


He took our family on our first trip to Hawaii when I was seven and paid for it by selling his baked goods while working at a train station. For real. We went to so many places around the world when I was young because of him. When I grew up and planned a family, I always said I hoped that I could afford to do the same for my kids, and I have been fortunate to be able to do so. What an education I have received because of my Dad.




My Dad was born in Bath, UK. I went there last fall and fell in love. I stood at the train station wearing his mother’s wedding ring (I miss my Nanny so), and I was in a sort of emotional state of wonder as I explored the historical city where he entered the world. It’s been part of my motivation to explore my own sense of identity and British Roots as I come up to turning 50 next month and legally return to using my maiden name, Rese. (Spare the peanut butter comparisons, I have heard them all). I realized when I did our family history five years ago for his 70th birthday, that wow, I kind of look like him…and he looks like his mom…and so I feel all that good genetic stuff and feel connected in a weird middle age way that sort of surprises me. Now that my kids are older and need less and less of me (I don’t have to wipe their butts), I have more time to think about who I am and where I have come from, and really, where I want to go. What are my next 25 years going to look like?


My Dad instilled in me a sense of wonder. When I was in grade school, he had a plane, and I remember flying with him. I was never scared. I believed whenever we travelled commercially that if the pilot had a heart attack, he could save us and land the plane like in the movies. He was, and still is, my hero.

My Dad has a heart of gold. I love him to death. I felt the need to write about this guy, who is modest, generous, simple, reflective (for those who say he doesn’t share much, it’s all in there) and who has instilled in me so many traits. Totally genetic.




At 75, my Dad has only just started to “cut back” working to 4 days a week. All this time, he has worked full time. He never complains. He says it keeps him young and active. Plus, he maintains a garden. Half the time I call, he has to be ushered in from tending to his plants. And then he’ll tell me everything that is blooming, popping up, being eaten by raccoons, or what they ate that day, or he has plans to pickle. This is why his doctor tells him he is more than a decade less physically than his stated age. How I aspire to be like him, hope to have this same drive and energy, and keep travelling as much as he does.

Dad, have the best of birthdays and know that I am there in spirit. We will make up for this, promise.


Your loving daughter, Stephanie


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