Father's Day

Father's day is a special day for me.  I'm lucky to have a father, for one, and I remind myself of this fact often.  My father always made me feel special.  He guided me, protected me.  He taught me some valuable lessons and let me learn some of those on my own (and often times painfully).

He taught me, not only by words but as well as deeds, what it means to be a real man: honor, integrity, loyalty and respect.  He would tell me to "hug the monster" - meaning embrace your fear, grab onto it, wrestle it, fight it, kick it in the jo-ho's, beat it into submission and turn it to something productive and worth while.

So what is Father's Day, really?  Is it a day where I get to go sit on the front porch and watch the sun rise and then move to the back porch and watch the sun set, all while drinking a beer and smoking a cigar and having the children rub my feet and feed me grapes, then later when the kids are asleep having my wife... ahem .... never mind.  While that does sound like marvelous fun... I think totally misses the point of Father's Day.

Father's Day isn't really about me.  Without them (I'm pointing to a picture of my children now, if you can't see) Father's Day would just be another day that I needed to cut the grass or do laundry or something else equally un-fun.  As fathers, we never really stop being "dad" and our children never stop being our children.  There's no on-off switch that magically changes one day as they go off to college and start their own lives... that we suddenly stop caring for them and trying to protect them.  If there is, there's something wrong and we can talk about that later.  Father's Day is every day - each day that my children make a good decision, grow and learn is a celebration of being a father to me.   Having my children complain that I have to go out of town for work or won't be home until late makes me feel wonderful inside.

I cherish the memories that each of my children has given me.  I cherish the memories that I have with my father.

I only hope that I live up to be 1/2 the man that I think my father is.