First, thank you for all the positive comments and warm wishes. They mean a lot, and certainly helped keep me calmer and less stressed.

I met with my father this morning. And it was a good talk.

I think he's cleaned up and gotten his life together, and I'm old enough now to understand just how complicated life is, so I can move forward. Rather than dwell on the negativity of the past, I'm going to choose to move on positivitly, thinking of this as a chance to start over with some aspects of my life.

Everyone should be able to make for themselves a few "do overs" so we can make things better, shouldn't we?

So instead of rehashing anything painful in the past, we talked about what we both have been doing for the past 10-20 years, how our families are, what jobs we have, all kinds of things, looking for good connections. No blame, or excuses, or anger. Just two people related by blood and separated by time, getting to know each other again.

And we started over.

We wont be a typical father and son ever. We both know that. But we still can choose to have a good relationship. It may take a while to be completely comfortable again, but you have to start somewhere.

I can use this single moment in time to review and hopefully improve a few more aspects of my life as well. Think of is as a upgrade for life, fixing a few broken things and giving me some opportunities to make things better.

I hugged my dad and told him I loved him. And I did mean it. I'd say it was a pretty good day.