Today is my dad’s birthday.  My dad (and my mom, but it’s not my mom’s birthday, so she just has to wait until August 2nd for her post (although a lot of this applies to her too)) is awesome.  He’s been incredibly supportive throughout my entire life, but in particular during these last three years, after I got divorced.  I had no idea how I was going to manage when I was working 12-hour days heading up a number of deals and my son was only 18 months old.  Without hesitation, my parents moved to Los Angeles from Texas (and they’re, like, sixth generation Texans, so that’s huge) to help me out so I wouldn’t have to take a step back from my career or scour the city for child care and worry about how good it was.

In her book Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg writes, “I truly believe that the single most important career decision that a woman makes is whether she will have a life partner and who that partner is.  I don’t know of a single woman in a leadership position whose life partner is not fully—and I mean fully—supportive of her career. No exceptions.”  And when I was reading that, I thought it should be broader than just a significant other.  I think we all need to pick someone to have in our lives who has our back, whether it be a significant other, a friend, a sibling or, in my case, a parent.  There’s just too much to handle on our own without a helping hand.

So my dad has been one of those people for me.  He does my grocery shopping and dry cleaning; he notices if my car is low on gas and goes to fill it up; he loves to cook and creates amazing dishes for all of us; he spends hours with my son playing games and doing activities with him like planting a garden in the backyard.  Plus, he’s just a really fun guy to hang out with.  He’s a former art teacher with a wicked sense of humor (although, admittedly, it’s changed with age), so he tries to make everything entertaining and inventive, as illustrated by these pics:

When I got dressed today, I knew I had to wear something that matched my celebratory mood.  This Aminaka Wilmont dress I got off of Net-a-Porter (http://www.net-a-porter.com) was perfect.  The colors are so vivid and look to me like a disco ball party is happening right on my dress.  All that’s missing are streamers and a cake.  I also knew that my dad, The Artist, would totally appreciate it (after all, one of his activities with me when I was a kid was making our own tie-dye shirts, which we were hopeful would look something like this (alas, they did not)).

So Happy Birthday, Dad!!!  I love you.