Father's Day

This week is spring break here in our county and there is no school. My youngest will be home when she feels like it for me to mother and friends will be visiting from Indiana. I have decided to take a few days off from blogging and since no one has stepped up to "guest" blog I shall post old entries from my very first blog that I have recently discovered while searching for something else. I've also chosen to post entries that had to do with my father. Today is the anniversary of his death and so I thought it appropriate to post old entries that had to do with him. See you next week!

June 20, 2004

Today is Father's Day. My daughters were up early, tip toeing into the room to see if their father was awake. Discovering that he wasn't up yet, they retreated to their craft table and worked hard on a homemade giant card which they then left sitting on his night table. It was full of coins they had dumped out of their piggy banks and when he finally awoke they gleefully watched him open it. They brought him homemade gifts they had made in school and helped him unwrap them. They clapped their hands in anticipation and in joy when he oohed and ahhed over his new trinkets. It was joyful and innocent and wonderful.

Unfortunately, as we become adults we lose that wonder. Shopping for special holidays has become the norm, but it is just an occasion where we are forced yet again to buy a gift. There is worry and stress as we ponder what to get, decide when we have the time to get it, and check our bank accounts to make sure we can afford it. Being on the other end of it is just as jaded. Do we really need that? What do we need with another pair of earrings that we could go out and buy ourselves if necessary?

My father wasn't like that. My father loved getting and giving gifts. He was the only adult I knew that still had that childlike glee in giving gifts he thought long and hard about and then purchased. He still had that childlike innocence and wonder in receiving a gift shaking packages and guessing while we begged him to rip into the wrappings. He enjoyed Christmas, his birthday, and Father's Day. He didn't care what we go him. He loved everything from ties and tie tacks to golf balls work gloves. He thoroughly enjoyed any tools he received, and anything from Ronco was a great day indeed. Homemade gifts were put with loving care on his desk or bookcase, and he wrote on every gift he received the date and giver's name. He made shopping for him a blast and my brother and I couldn't wait to get his gift each holiday.

My father isn't alive any more. Now I just pass by the books with titles like, "The Greatest Hardware Stores in America" and "Home Remedies to Cure All Ills". I barely glimpse any more at the new laser tools at Sears. I turn away now at the Chia Pet commercials. It is too hard. I miss his excitement. I miss the joy I felt in giving him a gift, and I miss his joy in getting that gift. I miss him.

Today, instead, I will watch my children celebrate their father. I will instead share in their excitement and join in with them on their happiness. Then later, much later, I will tell them the story of their grandfather so that I too can quietly celebrate my father in the only way that I am able to do today.