What My Father Taught Me

Originally written in 2016, on what would have been his 60th birthday.

My father, Vincent Anthony Posa, would have turned 60 on August 14, 2016, just months after he died. I spent much of that day wishing I could thank him. So instead I wrote down the lessons he gave me, the ones that shaped who I am.

You'll never know unless you try. Whether we were ordering at a restaurant or facing a big decision, Dad pushed us to try new things. He got scuba certified, took flying lessons, and was always starting a new hobby or business. Because of him, I've learned to say yes.

You'll figure it out. I spent hours beside him in the garage, the engine room of our boat, or under the hood of the car. We never followed the manual. He taught me how to think: understand how something works, and you can find the solution yourself.

You gotta enjoy what you do. Dad started as a paperboy and bought his first house at nineteen. He never told us what to do for work, only that we had to love it. If you're doing what you love, he'd say, the money will come.

You have no idea what it takes to maintain everything. By ten, I was doing paperwork in his office after school and learning how to manage his properties. He showed us the bills and what it cost to keep everything running. It kept us humble and grateful.

There's so much to see in the world. Dad was an explorer. He visited my sister in the Peace Corps and slept on an air mattress in her two-room house, and he backpacked through three countries with another of my sisters. When he died, he was on his motorcycle, headed back from the Hoover Dam. He was living an adventure until his very last day.

You can do it. He had a confidence in his daughters that still brings me to tears. He taught me to drive in his 1976 Cadillac convertible, a car so big I could barely see over the wheel. If I could drive that, he said, I could drive anything.

You only live once. He often said he could drop dead tomorrow. It was hard to hear, but it was true. Being honest about death is one of the most powerful ways to stop taking life for granted.

Nothing is more important than family. Dad loved family dinners, epic games of hide and seek, and stories of his big Italian family making sauce together. At the end of the day, he'd say, all you really have is each other.

Thank you, Dad, for my life. You live inside me, and I will keep living out these lessons for the rest of mine.

Danielle Posa