If it weren't for Daddy, Mom wouldn't be a mother - Happy Mother's Day, Mom...a bit early.

Sudiegirl’s note: This is the actual remembrance I wrote about my dad, but I’ll make a few tweaks to keep it readable for blog readers that are coming to call. I read this the day of his funeral…I don’t know if there was a dry eye in the house or not. I didn’t care – I just wanted to talk about what my dad meant to all of us. “Music, Maestro…”

Being a man in a house full of women (sometimes, even the dog and cat were female) is not an easy task as it is. When you consider that the women in question are my mother, my sister, and myself, that equation may even cause you to shake your head in sympathy. That’s where Kipling’s phrase “If you can keep your head about you when all around you are losing theirs” comes in, especially on special occasions like first dates, proms, graduations, weddings and day to day things like trying to figure out what to wear to school.

My dad never claimed to be Mr. Blackwell, Calvin Klein or anyone else who was in the know as far as women’s fashion was concerned. Anyone who would suggest to a girl to wear a turtleneck under her prom dress because she was showing a little too much skin for his taste doesn’t exactly subscribe to Vogue. (BTW, readers – that was ME I was referring to…)

Through the years, Daddy worked hard to make a good life for his family, Our friends knew they could stop by our house for a good visit and some laughs. Our friends were never shy about calling our dad “Dad”, just like he was their own.

Daddy also possessed a self-deprecating sense of humor. One of my friends in high school told me she thought my dad was “cute”. Now, that’s the last thing a teenage girl wants a peer to say about her dad. So at dinner time that night, I told him that my friend Catherine said he was cute.

His reply?

“Oh, the poor little blind girl!”

Another thing that Dad adjusted to rather humorously was when Ruth and I started dating. For some reason, he didn’t give Ruth’s boyfriends much static. However, when I started dating, he liked to put a little fear in them. For example, my first boyfriend in high school was 6’4” and played football. As we would say in my family, “He was big enough to eat hay.”

One night, “the boy” came over to take me out. Dad just HAPPENED to be cleaning a pistol in the living room. The whole living room smelled like gun cleaner. It was natural to me but not to others. The boyfriend made the mistake of admiring the handgun.

“Gee, Mr. Dawson, that’s a nice-looking Colt .357!”

Father’s reply?

“Why, thank you! It’s my wife’s. I got it for her for Mother’s Day.”

Then, he put it together faster than greased lightning and decided to test the sights on my beau while asking him what time he would have me home.

My beau and I wound up spending a quiet evening at home with my parents. He later expressed fear that my dad would shoot him, and I advised him, “Daddy would never shoot you in the living room…you’d get blood on the carpet!”

I can’t believe I had more dates after that, but apparently not all teenage boys are afraid of handguns.

Dad always kept his head about him when all others would lose theirs. Emergency room trips, childbirth, life crises big and small – Daddy would lend a hand whenever he could. From lost teeth and lost contact lenses to lost loves and lost jobs, Daddy never refrained from hugging us and wiping our tears away. His hands, rough from work, would stroke our hair. He would tell us he would help us and everything would be OK. We got chewed out when it was warranted, but we also got help when we needed it.

In addition, Dad and Mom worked together the best they could. They started their own business together, they worked in the Washington post office together, and they raised us together. There were times that one parent was more hands-on than the other, but Ruth and I grew up knowing that our parents were both there. Mom and Dad weren’t perfect, but they loved us and they always did their best for us.

Dad had his share of hard times too, and he bore them with great dignity and strength. He lost both parents within a year of each other. He supported my mother through two miscarriages and other health issues. He supported my sister and me with various issues and illnesses. He dealt with his own cancer. Most importantly, Dad taught us that just because life gets you down doesn’t mean you have to stay there. He always said it best…”I’m a survivor.”

After Dad’s cancer diagnosis and the treatments that followed, he kept the same outlook on life. The scenery was new, and so were some of the characters, but he kept on working hard to be a good husband, father, and now grandfather. He had to say goodbye to people he cared about, and concepts he once believed in proved not to be as trustworthy as he once thought. But he never gave up.

The last few lines of Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If” sums it up best about Daddy.

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
nd - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

Daddy filled that minute and then some. And now he has the earth, and the rest he so richly deserved.

We love you Daddy…rest in peace.