Reflections on Relationships Past

Growing up, my best friend's mom always helped me participate in extra curricular activities while both of my parents worked by picking me up at the same time as her daughter from school when we had play practice or an art club meeting. She was like my second mom, and she passed away when we were in 10th grade.  After that, her dad would pick us up from school if we needed to be picked up.  She was my sister.  They were my second family.

Recently my dad told me that when I was going to college for the first time that my best friends father told my dad that he was "a bad father who did not prepare for his daughter's future;" he was also resentful toward the scholarships I received from my church because I was attending a Methodist college and I was Methodist. My best friend and I were attending the same school; I had to pay for tuition and fees with financial aid, her dad paid in cash.  Dad did not try to defend himself or his inability to prepare for college, he knew that it would already be an uphill battle for me to go to school at all.

The situations that life presents to us are sometimes out of our control.  I had no control over who my parents would be, or that I would grow up poor, and before the age of 8 would be moved to Texas because my parents filed for bankruptcy due to circumstances that were out of their control (my dad's company that he was working for was doing something that he was punished for).  My dad didn't tell me that her father said any of this until about a month ago.  Something that I might have been upset about at first, but now that I am done, I can see his purpose for doing so. 

He wanted me to go through school without feeling bad that I needed to use Financial Aid Grants and Student Loans, he wanted me to finish school with the knowledge that I was improving my situation for myself, not to change the opinion of my ex-best friend's dad, or anyone else for that matter.  The thing that makes me sad about the situation is that I always aspired to be like her dad, successful, intelligent, a good parent.  It made me sad to think that someone that I looked up to for so many years turned out to be such a judgmental and hateful person. 

I know now that my true role model has always been my dad.  He truly has been the support system that my family needed, always giving us unconditional love.  He literally worked himself up from nothing, something that her dad never had to do.  He stuck by and believed in his family even when he had very little to give, he gave it all; and when he had something to give to others, he did so willingly, and never judged them by what they had or did not have.