My father was 58 when I was born, and I’ll be honest with you: I had no idea that he was old until people started pointing it out to me. Such as when I started school, and my friends would ask me “why is your dad so old?” I didn’t see him as old. He was just my daddy. We snuggled on the couch and watched TV together. He carried me up the stairs to bed and tucked me in at night. He told me bedtime stories. (And his bedtime stories were pretty cool – I got a lot of neat stories from his service in World War II, for instance. None of my friends could say their dads had fought the Nazis!) Now, granted, my father was always youthful for his age – even into his 70’s he swam 20 laps and walked a mile every day, and at weddings he was the first one on the dance floor and the last one off. But that didn’t stop just about everyone we met from asking him, “is this your granddaughter?” (He never got offended, just smiled and said, “no, my daughter.”)
It wasn’t until I hit my teen years, when my dad was starting to slow down some, that things kind of changed. He sort of got tired of parenting, I guess you could say. My three oldest siblings were all grown at that point and it was just my brother (2 years older) and I still at home. My dad let a lot slide with us that he wouldn’t have done with the 3 older ones, and he was maybe a bit less attentive than he should have been. But he still loved us, and spent time with us. I was about to turn 24 when he died, and he had just turned 82. So he did die earlier in my life than the average “young” parent might, but ironically, he actually outlived my mother (who was 21 years younger than him) by over 6 years – she died of cancer in her 50’s.
All in all, he was just my dad, and I didn’t really see him much differently than that. I loved him the same as any kid loves her father.
Me and my dad a couple of years before he passed away: