A child’s home is the foundation for the rest of his/her life. This isn’t news. There are some things—our hair color, eye color, height—that were genetic guarantees, evidence of the nature side of the endless debate. But there are many aspects that are dependent upon the environment in which we are brought up. It can form the beliefs we have about religion, about different races, different countries. It can (though this is often debated) shape our personalities and the way we interact with the world.

I know I’m biased, but I believe my parents are the best in the world. They are warm and engaging and open. They have strong beliefs but let us form our own (and totally accepted us when they differed from theirs). We are incredibly lucky because our home was one filled with love, and our family is incredibly close.

My mom, my sister, and I are all very similar. My dad, on the other hand, is the only male in a house full of women: even the dogs are female. I often wondered if he wished he had sons at times when my mom would take us shopping or to the beach or to see rom coms, things he wanted no part in. But deep down I always knew the answer; he shows how much he loves us every single day (he still cries when I come home to visit even though I’ve been out of the house since college). And it’s only now, at 23, that I’m realizing just how much I learned from him.

I didn’t realize how great my dad was as a kid. He was just my dad. My memories of him—of go-carting with him the first time I wasn’t invited to a party my sister was going to, of eating cold pizza and tacos for breakfast, of him tickling us until we couldn’t breathe, and letting us push him in the pool for hours on end (always pretending to be surprised)—were always fond, but I had nothing to compare them to. I didn’t know how lucky we were because we knew nothing else. It wasn’t until we got older, when we saw other family dynamics, that we realized not everybody had a dad that would jump at the chance to make their kids whatever they wanted for dinner, or take the long way up to the vacation house so his kids could look for bears, or build a tree house in the backyard for kids who took one step inside before seeing a bug and never returning.

He taught me how to skip rocks, drive a car, do a doughnut in the parking lot (just kidding, Mom). He taught me how to start a fire, took me to my first and only football game, and still lets me call and vent about the stupid drama in my life he can neither understand nor empathize with and is always, consistently, forever on my side. He was at every sports game even though I sat on the bench, every baton twirling tournament and singing show and dance recital.

He was the one to help me through my first break up, to take me out to lunch and tell me not to worry because I’ll always land on my feet. He is the reason my standard for relationships is impossibly high: because I grew up watching a man love a woman so much, he worked days, nights, and weekends for four years to take her to Italy for their 25^th wedding anniversary—so much that he constantly stops and stares at her and says, “Isn’t your mother beautiful?”

My dad is the hardest working, most loving man I’ve ever known. He’s not perfect and definitely makes mistakes but always owns up to it (often in tears), showing me what a real man, a real parent, a real person looks like.

Thanks for being you, Dad.