When it comes to being a father, I'm lucky that karma somehow overlooked me.

Otherwise, my kids would both be drug addicts covered with tattoos and would constantly be saying, "(Bleep) you, Dad," or maybe even ignoring me.

But God is good, and I know he truly understands what is in our hearts. The lesson I learned from the way I treated my own father -- who died in March 2008 -- is understanding that when parents make mistakes, it is because they are only human. They're almost always making those mistakes out of love and they often make them because of the own (human) limitations.

Unless a parent is just a bad person, spite is rarely involved.

It certainly wasn't with my dad. He was a wonderful man who was always there when I really needed him, and that's something that cannot be overestimated in its importance. If our personalities clashed, it was partly a result of the times (I was a teenager in the '60s) and at least partly because of my own flaws.

I can only imagine how difficult it must have been to parent a child who for whatever reason couldn't be happy and couldn't fulfill his own potential. I say I can only imagine it because my own children have been just the opposite, and it certainly isn't due to me.

Pauline and Virgile have both transitioned from wonderful children to wonderful adults, and I am so proud of them I can barely contain myself. Pauline and her family leave tomorrow for two years in Indonesia, and Virgile and his wife are completing their traing and leaving for two years in Greece later this summer.

Me, I'm just watching.

And enjoying the heck out of it all.