I Love My Dad

Before he decided to finally retire, my dad worked on outages for nuclear plants, he would travel from state to state for several weeks to a month or two before heading home and applying for more work. Thankfully for this last outage, he would be working for several weeks instead of a full month. But because of the pandemic, the decision to go travel out of state for work was the most worried I had ever been for him. To make things worse, he has an acute lung problem as the result of breathing in bits of asbestos from a previous job before safety guidelines were established some decades ago. So that brought my anxiety level through the roof.
Even before my Dad left on his journey, my mother and I handmade masks and bought gloves for him just in case he needed backup and the following weeks would stay in touch with him every day when we could making sure he was alright. My Dad admits that what he did was dumb and blames it on not taking the virus outbreak seriously. As much as I want to punch him for doing that, right now I'm just relieved he's back home.