Father's Day

I have started a blog or two and not gotten them posted. No excuse except it kind of fits my many good intentions and unfinished tasks. There is so much to write about and the urgency to write about any one thing passes quickly. SO that whole thing about carpe diem resonates well and then slowly disappears!

For Mother’s Day, it is easy to find a substitute mother, when yours chooses to live so far away. We can buy her gifts and send her a card and there have been a few Mothers Days over the years that I have been privileged to spend with her. I treasure them for many reasons. But when I am here and she is there, I can always find some special lady to shower with attention. It is fun.

Finding a substitute Father is a little more difficult. For the reasons noted above where I have such good intentions but usually the card even arrives late (mostly because I send it very late), my sister and I have banded together and decided to take turns sending the cards so I can only screw up on half of the cards. Maybe with the reduced card-load in May and June, we can get more of them on time. My parents anniversary is at the end of May, Fathers Day is next and then my Dad’s birthday comes right after FD. So you see we have a busy time and almost single handedly support the card industry. It used to be even more complicated with my favorite Uncle and my Dad’s best friend and our “Uncle by choice” also had their birthdays in the midst of one week in June.

So I found the card and wrote my sentiments.. all of which I feel deeply. My Dad is an awesome man who taught me many things, virtuous things, not by speaking but by living. He was never the man to say, “Do as I say and not as I do”. He had gifts that were different than everyone else’s and at times I might not have appreciated them as I should. But looking back I am so privileged to have gotten to be his daughter. He taught me how to treat others and he also taught me how to have fun. He would have been way more competitive than I. In fact, I think he probably was challenged by the fact that I wanted to do things for the sheer joy of doing them and not because I would ever be competitive. I think it had to do with that testosterone thing… definitely missing in his daughters.

Since my Dad is in Arizona and here I am in Oregon… finding substitutes was not that easy. And let’s be honest, it isn’t that PC to be a grown woman looking for a stand-in for her Dad even for one day. Instead, I looked around for the Fatherless (ok they were not fatherless but without their fathers this day... I think you cannot technically be fatherless) and invited them to dinner. I think it should be a tradition and in honor of the occasion we stopped and honored our Dad’s (or tried to). It really filled a bit of emptiness to hear about someone’s Dad and memories that still have value so many years later. Some of the folks at the table had a Dad who had passed away. Some, like me, had Dad’s far away. And some spoke of a Dad, not by birth, but a man who stepped up and provided in very special ways. It made me really think about how we touch people and what kind of impact we can have on people around us that will still make them think about it 25-30 years later.

Most of us carry with us a sense of God the Father because of the man that raised us. Who do you touch that will make them remember you? DKU