my dad or why I am obsessed with this Ani quote

"...to accept and get by as my father learned to do, but without all the accepting and getting by that got my father through." -Ani Difranco, "Angry Anymore" My father is one of the most quietly amazing people I've ever met. He and my mother started dating when she was a freshmen and he was a sophomore in highschool, with the exception of my father's (or maybe my mother's) first semester of college they've been together ever since. I know my mother, trust me on this one. She is just like me but with a more than healthy dose of religion, and a less odd childhood and so is infinitely less close-mouthed. My father's patience amazes me. I mean seriously my goal for the past few years if to stay out of my mother's way as much as possible. (k, enough mom-bashing. She's my mother, of course I love her, or something.) My father went to school to be an art teacher. His painting are possibly some of the most amazing contemporary stuff I've ever seen (admittedly I may be less than objective). They're all over our house and I'm sure much of the imagery I still adore (the moon, sand castles, rain drops, the ocean, the queen of hearts, colors in general) can be traced back to having those up everywhere my whole life. After my father did his student teaching he started applying for jobs, this went on for years. Eventually someone told that as far as his confidential files were concerned he had no student teaching experience, so of course he hadn't been hired, or even encouraged. When he went back to his college all the paperwork had been lost and the prof he'd worked with was gone without a forwarding address. They said they couldn't get him new documents but that he could get the certs to be a tech teacher at a sever discount to make up for their mistake and that technology was going to be big in the next few years. So my dad became a technology teacher. A couple years ago he started a micro-brewery on the side, a one-man operation. He's quitting the highschool at the end of this year. The point is he never wanted to be a tech teacher, not to say he didn't make his own fun with it. But someone screwed up and he couldn't do anything about it. Relatively I know it's not a great tragedy or anything, but it does suck. It's not even really the teaching that gets me though, it's the paintings. I was raised with Janson's History of Art on the bottom shelf where I could reach it and look through it when ever I wanted (which is why I'll never book-box-ify that text). My dad's paintings have never been widely known in a circle outside our friends, but it seems like they should. I mean if I start talking about Picasso's 'Dream' or Munch's 'Scream' you might not know it off the top of your head, or maybe you would, but regardless sooner or later you could figure it out. But if I were to go on a tangent about the colors in the raindrops on the pane in the paining in our living room, most people will have one hundred and twenty percent no clue what I'm talking about it, they've never seen it. To me it just seems tragic, but--you know--beautiful. I guess all life is that. I mean you don't know if you'll ever get your message across or even acknowledged, but you just keep living as beautifully as you can.