Who has inspired me to live my most authentic life?

I have been privileged to have many mentors but a video my grandson posted today on Facebook inspired me to write about my step-father. This is what I wrote:

My grandson who is 23, posted an awesome video on Facebook this morning about a third grade dropout who was an awesome father. It prompted me to send him a message about his maternal step-grandfather, my mother’s second husband,who he was not privileged to know because passed away before he was born.
My step-father, my grandson’s Grandpa Byrd, entered my life when I was about 5 years old. He was dating my Mom after my parents separated and my father had filed for a divorce. It was 1947 and memories of WWII were still uppermost in everyone’s mind. Lots of folks were struggling to make ends meet. With two small children to feed, my Mom had been taking in other folks’ laundry before the war ended and had turned our living room into a sleeping room, renting it to a single woman who worked at the local military installation. In this way, she could be at home to care for us and still bring in extra income.

She and this soft-spoken gentleman who was often at our back door with much-welcomed groceries was a country boy from southern Oklahoma. He was kind and in retrospect, it was obvious that he was in love with my Mom and totally willing to embrace her young children. I was to learn as I got older that his education had been quite limited. He only went to second grade and the only book he attempted to read was the Bible.

The video my grandson posted was a commencement speech and the speaker shared that his father had been forced by life’s circumstances to drop out of school after the third grade and work in the fields just like my step-dad. Just like my step-dad, he made his living as a cook.

It appears that in both cases, the speaker’s dad and my step-dad did not let their circumstances hamper their growth as human beings. They both embraced life fully. As the speaker told his audience. My dad was a “man.” His lack of opportunities that we take for granted did not prevent him from loving deeply, learning daily and growing wise.

He did his best as did my step-dad and I know today, that when we do our best, it is always enough. The news is filled with powerful-highly-educated-men who to my way of thinking have never grown up. It is a reminder that power and success are not the measure of what the speaker and I would call a “man.” Wisdom is seldom the result of a formal education. It is the result of learning from experience and being willing to let every person, place and thing be your teacher.