Today would have been my dad's 70th birthday.

His name was Rudy.

And if there is one thing I can say with complete confidence, it is that our relationship was complicated.

Not bad, bad. But definitely complicated.

We could argue over absolutely nothing and somehow turn it into a full production. We were both stubborn. Both sarcastic. Both convinced we were right. Both very capable of holding our ground long after everyone else had lost interest in the subject. Backing down was never an option. We knew how to stay mad and keep the silent treatment going.

In hindsight, this may have been less of a personality conflict and more of a personality duplication problem.

Apparently, I am my father's daughter

There are things you understand about your parents only after you get older.

Some of them are profound.

Others happen when you hear yourself scolding your own child and suddenly think:

Wow, I just sounded like my dad.

I catch it now.

The tone.

The look.

The very specific irritation caused by someone doing something in a way that makes absolutely no sense to you, even though technically there are several acceptable ways to do it haha.

Somewhere in the middle of being frustrated with my own son, I can hear Rudy's words coming out of my mouth.

Which feels a little ironic, considering how often I was convinced he was being unreasonable.

Life has jokes.

We were more alike than I realized

My dad was born in Zacapa, Guatemala and later built his life in Massachusetts after immigrating to the United States.

He worked hard and took pride in his work. He liked old movies, good music, a poker table full of friends, foods of all kinds, the shooting range, and spending time with people he cared about.

He was also stubborn, complicated, funny, sarcastic, and generous.

Basically, subtlety was not the family business.

We did not always understand each other.

Or maybe we understood each other too well.

When two strong personalities are similar in all the wrong places, there is not always a lot of room for graceful disagreement.

Sometimes there is just disagreement.

Loudly.

With follow-up commentary.

Love does not always look polished

I think we are sometimes encouraged to rewrite complicated relationships after someone dies.

Everything becomes soft. Every memory becomes perfect. Every rough edge gets sanded down.

That would not be honest for us.

My dad and I had a rough relationship at times. We frustrated each other. We misunderstood each other. We pushed each other's buttons with almost professional efficiency.

But I loved him.

And he loved me.

Both things can exist at the same time.

That is something adulthood has taught me over and over again.

A relationship does not have to be perfect to matter.

A person does not have to be easy to love to be deeply loved.

And sometimes the people who drive us the craziest are the ones whose mannerisms we discover living comfortably inside us.

Again, ironic.

I see him differently now

My dad suffered a severe stroke in 2009 that changed the course of his life.

There are things I understand about that period now that I probably did not fully understand then.

Pride.

Frustration.

Loss of independence.

The difficulty of adjusting when life does not go the way you expected.

I understand stubbornness differently now too.

Sometimes it is just stubbornness.

But sometimes it is how people protect the little bit of control they feel they have left.

Age has a funny way of giving context to things you once saw only from your side.

And then there was his grandson

For all of the complicated parts of my relationship with my dad, there was never anything complicated about the way he loved my son.

He adored him.

And I loved watching that.

There is something strange and beautiful about seeing your parent become a grandparent.

You recognize the same person, but somehow you are seeing another version of them.

Softer in certain places.

More patient.

Or at least selectively patient.

I am sure my son could provide his own fact-check.

Seventy

My dad passed away in 2024.

Today he would have been 70.

I do not know exactly what 70-year-old Rudy would have been like if he hadn't had his stroke, but I am fairly confident he would still have had an opinion about everything.

Strongly expressed.

Possibly unsolicited.

And probably followed by a joke and some profanity haha.

I'm not a sentimental person, but I miss him.

I miss the parts of him that made me laugh.

I even miss some of the parts that used to annoy me.

Because grief is strange like that.

Eventually, some of the things that once drove you crazy become the things that make you smile when they show up in your memory.

Or, apparently, appear in your own personality.

The things we inherit

We inherit more than names, faces, and family stories.

Sometimes we inherit the sarcasm.

The stubbornness.

The work ethic.

The tendency to say exactly what we think.

The inability to watch someone do something inefficiently without commentary.

I see pieces of my dad in myself all the time now.

Some make me laugh.

Some make me understand him better.

Some make me cringe.

I did not get my refusal to settle from nowhere. I did not invent my inability to let something go just because it would be easier to. Even the sarcasm, the dry humor that shows up in half of what I write for Moli Brew, I know exactly where that came from.

And now I see that same stubbornness in my son. Oof, how the cycle continues.

Today, on his 70th birthday, I am not trying to turn our relationship into something it was not.

I am grateful for what it was.

Complicated.

Funny.

Frustrating.

Loving.

Very Cordon.

Happy heavenly birthday, Pa. Apparently, you are still getting the last word.

Monica