My dad.

So it's hard watching your father get older.

When I was little, there was no one stronger, braver, or smarter than my dad--I think that is the way it is for most kids. When I worked in the day care, the two-year olds used to get into shouting matches saying "No, MY Daddy." There was never any context to these fights and no other words were involved (it really was the most bizarre behavior I'd ever seen--one minute they would be quietly eating paste and shoving art supplies up their noses, the next they would be screaming about their dads--I would try to explain to screaming boy one that screaming boy two also has a daddy, and then they would start yelling at me, in which case I would calmly tell them that, contrary to their belief, it was actually MY daddy). He could fix anything, knew the answer to every question and knew exactly how much milk to put in Sugar Crisp so that it did not get too soggy during Saturday morning cartoons.

But as you grow older, you start to notice chinks in the armor. The hardest day is when you realize that your dad is not super-human: he's just human. You have to learn to start relying on him less and yourself more. It's a natural part of the growing-up-and-moving-out-of-your-parent's-home thing. However, it's still disheartening to watch as your hero slowly gives up hope and accepts his own mortality; that pillar of strength that you once relied on is crumbling before you. It is in that moment when you have to become the pillar of strength for him.

My father is still the smartest man I know. And he is still the bravest, for different reasons than I thought as a kid (which was for killing spiders and getting the snake out of the crawl space): now it is a much more complex, gray-shaded version of bravery. And I still rely on him--only now he relies on me, too. Which is okay, I guess, as long as he doesn't ask me to remove snakes from the house--that's what Mom is for.