Summer 2012 Newsletter - LaGuardia Community College - CUNY

has learned the softer side of perseverance. With all the failures that have occurred in my life,
whenever I succeeded it was as sweet as that first bite of the ripest mango. Throughout the majority
of my life I pushed on past obstacles without fully understanding why I didn't want to give
up; passion may have been the reason from time to time. But with raising a child I found out it
takes more than that, it takes true compassion. A virtue I thought would come naturally, giving
the father-daughter bond. Unfortunately the inner frustrations that I had toward myself had been
like a cancer spreading throughout my life and affected those closest to me. I needed to learn
how to appreciate who I am, and what I have in order to feel confidence and unconditional love
for others; mainly my daughter.
“There are three types of people in the world, those who make things happen, those
who watch things happen and those who wonder what’s happening!” ― Anonymous
Years from now I don't want to wonder what had happened to my daughter and the relationship
that we share. This brings to mind one of the Bruce Willis Die Hard films "Live Free or Die
Hard”. The film displays Bruce Willis as a father along with his estranged daughter. What pulled
me into this particular movie is that throughout the whole film Bruce Willis struggles with his
relationship with his daughter. She grew up to have all of his tough and challenging attributes.
They seem more like twins then father and daughter, bumping heads whenever they were together.
The funny aspect of this relationship is that I wouldn't mind my daughter growing up to
be this tough feminine woman. But on the other hand I don't want to be in Bruce Willis's shoes
where he mostly fights with her, just to make up for the lost time he wasn't able to spend with
her due to work. Now she has sort of rebelled against him and challenges him on everything. On
a daily basis I continue to learn something new about myself and how to be better parent and
person. I steadily collect advice and information from various resources, learn from the mistakes
and experiences of others parents. I always thought that things would be so much easier if there
was some sort of field manual or a How to be A Daddy Book for Dummies, with plenty of illustrative
photos, until I came across a Jim Henson quote where he once said that “Kids don't remember
what you try to teach them. They remember what you are”. Since leaving the military in
2010, I decided to do just that. By adjusting my mentality and allowing my daughter to be a typical
kid, and not prematurely prepping her for the approach of some sort of apocalypse while
most parents are teaching their kids to ride bikes. Allow her to make mistakes without transforming
into Gunnery Sergeant R. Lee Ermey as I’ve been told on numerous occasions.
“I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create
many ripples.” ― Mother Teresa
While growing up on an island in the South Pacific, I always found old wise sayings spoken by the
elders really cool. One saying in particular which stuck with me was told to me by my greatuncle.
"If you drop a pebble into the ocean and the ripples radiate outwards they will touch and
affect everything.” As a child you would never believe that tossing something as simple as a pebble
in the ocean would create a small ripple that could eventually turn into 30 foot swells 500
miles away, waves that would either provide an anxious surfer with that championship wave he
or she has been waiting for, or either a catastrophic one that all coastlines fear. Regardless of
which of the two would develop, it is safe to say that both would potentially create a change. A
change whether modest or traumatic, good or bad; definitely one significant enough to affect
those that would come in contact with it. Obviously there's a hidden lesson to be learned from
this old proverb; or either this old guy's mind had been sun baked a little too long. The lesson is
that decisions we make no matter how small will result in changes of various proportions. The
ripples in my life began in my grandfather's childhood long before I was born which affected my
mother's upbringing and then mines; now it threatens my daughter's childhood.
Twelve years have sprinted by since Jadzia’s birth, and nearly five of those years were spent away
from home on deployments and that’s not even counting the trainings schools I had to attend
that fell in between. Seems like I’m now, finally getting the hang of this “regular guy” persona. At
times I find myself tapping into that warrior ethos mindset, in order to negotiate past the Olympic
styled obstacles life set out in front of me. Who knew that all the years of absent affections
that I never came to experience would later submerge to effect the next generation of relationships
I would be involved in? Will the same be true for my daughter and her kids? I need to
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