I just about lost it watching this story:
(Update...it was uploaded to YouTube so I could embed...and I'm outta Kleenex)

i hate the fact that "nice stories" can trigger as much and as hard as others.

...........................

yeah - glad that at least somebody got it right
- but angry and sad that i never had it like that.

Well, you turned on the water-works here too.

Back when I traveled near constantly, I saw a lot of those. One night...............

Posted a few years back:

They moved clumsily through the non-secure, arrival area of the airport. The Mom, the grandparents, the aunts, uncle. Their little group of about 8 positioned themselves so that no arriving passenger was going to get past the filter they became.

The signs, the balloons and cameras did not even phase him. He looked to be about 12ish. He looked as if he was waiting for something awfully special…but very nervous too. He clearly had been crying a lot. Mom, aunts and uncles jumped with excitement and sometimes gave him a tug to test his excitement. He stood, he fidgeted and swayed holding on tight to a sign the aunt just gave him.

“Excuse me...what flight did you come off of?” they’d ask people over and over again as they streamed past. Then a scream….”that’s HIS flight!” They became really excited. The boy bounced and peered down the long terminal hallway. More and more passengers walked by. Eye’s were glued down that hall…necks craned. Then numerous screams in unison. The boy froze, then yelled "DAD!!!" louder than any background noise in the entire airport combined. The great brown camouflage man ran down the hall. Tears flowing down the frozen boy’s face. The great man bypassed mom, grans and all others. He ran to his boy. The sign drops to the floor. The boy is lifted and spun.

Not a dry eye in that part of San Antonio airport!

Welcome home G.I. Joe....and God Bless!

Many of us had huge vacuums in our lives instead of loving, caring fathers. I think this vid evokes tears in us.

Puffer

I have to say I will never no that feeling being a son
But being a Father I can give all i have into raising my 3 sons and one day I hope they can hug me like that .

For those of us that are Fathers all we can do is be the best dam father we can be and give our children a life that we deserved to have.

No tears for me only reaffirms my duties as a father
I have gotten over what could have been and i choose to focus what is and what is within my control

Good stuff , not saying that it is not ok to wonder what if

Just saying this is where i am and i understand everyone is in a different place

My eyes are also welling up with tears, reading this. I would give anything to know what that feels like...

I've been going through a ton of stock (license) photos lately looking for contents of one of my legislative/lobbying web pages. I had stumbled upon an entire genre of photos that rip my heart out.

They are painful in that I see clearer and clearer what I missed with regards parental love.

Those hugs in the video above, the hugs and love in the homecoming I wrote of...I knew none of those. I loved my parents. Event though... Even though I attached to a revolving door of hired help who could not reciprocate as true mothers; Even though the man I though was the center of the universe beat me unpredictably, kicked me like a 3rd-world stray dog and would torture my soul with sun-set to sun-rise sessions of pee-my-pants horror...I still loved them.

Going through those stock photos and some of MY family, I would literally go breathless at the demonstrated affection and returned love that I never knew.

A while ago, I sent to my one-surviving sister a photo of the Romney Family, all gathered, squished together on one piece of furniture and looking alive. i added a note to her; "We never knew this...not once." Her response; "no...not even once."


I never knew the feeling of nature and due safety provided by either parent...reciprocated love...and I never knew an ounce of physical affection --- from him.

oh, man - you're killin me! i have such a hard time seeing these.

and i hate it that every time i see a photo like those - my mind instantly jumps to - "i wonder what really goes on when nobody else is looking..." how sick is that? and guess who taught me to think that way?

When no one is looking...or listening too?

No CSA went on in my house as a kid, but the violence was off the freakin hook!

I know I was often loud enough for the neighbors to hear --- even in the cold weather when the windows were closed. I know, because kids from surrounding houses would tell me they heard.

But no matter, in the late 60 and early-to-mod 70s, proper white-bread families were not messed with when it came to child abuse. The term "Child-Abuse" did not even exist for people outside "inner-cities."