Today was a pretty good day except for the crappy weather, which always sucks..lol. Anyway, I was riding home from work with my dad tonight and he was listening to a CD by Memphis Bleek, and there was this one song that was playing that was so deep. It made me thinnk about my dad and everything he does and how hard he works to give me and my stepmom and my cousin everything. The lyrics go like this....

"Y'all don't understand me still

I never enjoyed success but my family will

And I'm alright with that.

Ok, so it's a rap song, and I know that a lot of people here don't like hip hop. But the words to it were so touching. Basically the point of the song was that the Memphis Bleak hates stardom and all of the stress that goes with it, but he does it to give his mom the life she never had and to give his kids the life that he didn't have growing up.

I just thought it was funny that my dad was playing it because i can say the same thing about him. He's obviously not a famous rapper, but he works his butt off to give us everything. I can remember when my cousin James came to live with us when I was little and he had like 3 shirts and some tore up from the floor up shoes, and my dad took him in and worked even harder than he already was to make sure he had a good life.

I always thought my dad had it really good when he was little, but then I found out how poor him and my grandma had to live, and I understand why he does it now. Some of the stuff I learned was shocking, and the idea that my dad had to hear my grandma crying in her room when she thought he was sleeping because she didnt know how they were going to make it upsets me, but it also makes me understand so much about him and why he's so strict about appreciating everything he gives us.

It also makes me mad at my grandfather, but I've decided that I don't have anything to forgive him for. It's up to my dad and my aunt to forgive him if they're still mad at him. I think my dad already has, but my aunt hasn't, and I don't know if I blame her. My grandpa has always had a lot of money, and when I found out that he wouldn't even pay child support so that my grandma could feed her kids I get upset.

A few months ago I posted about a lady my dad bought bread for at 7-11, and I was pissed because she had a brand new pack of ciggarettes but she didnt have money to buy food. Well, I didn't get it then, but now I do. I didn't know what had happened to him when he was little, so I couldn't see why it was so important to him for her to get that bread.

Then I had to sit and think about how hard he really works. My dad is always on his cell phone to his job. Someone calls every hour of every day, and sometimes he has to drop everything and go to work all the way in Newport News, which is like 40 miles from our house. He used to spend a week or more at a time in Carolina for his job too. I know he hates it. He doesn't have a job he likes, he has a job that pays a lot of money because he doesn't want my stepmom to have to work and he doesn't want me to have second best anything and he wants to be able to send my cousin to ODU and pay for it so my cousin wont have to work while he goes to school.

So, in a way, that song is a perfect description of my dads life. he doesn't get to enjoy his success. Instead, I enjoy it, and my stepmom enjoys it and my cousin enjoys it. I just hope that someday he gets to relax and enjoy the life he's worked so hard to give us