A Father's Days

PinF has been reminded for weeks now. Sophia the little PinF, treats Father's Day like Christmas, offering a daily countdown to how many days until "my" day arrives. Cute and nice for sure as she offers up her little self to do "whatever I want" on my day. A few years ago she arrived at my bedside with her little hand made card, offering me a hug, kiss and a back scratch. We made pancakes together, then "did what I liked", going to the beach for the day reading the Sunday paper. She knows her father is a charter member of the "Do Nothing Tribe" on Sundays, and she accomodates this in everyway she can. My own father never had daughters to contend with and I no sisters, a fact that I believe makes me better suited to be a father to a little girl than a boy, as I wouldn't want to spoil a boy like I do my daughter, that and the fact that the kisses and hugs disappear after a certain age in boys.

This Father's Day is a reminder also that for the first time in my life I am fatherless, a fact that I believe Sophia is acutely aware of and determined to compensate for by offering extra attention to her papi. Sophia often tells me she misses her pop-pop still, and I tell her I do too. Three years ago instead of sending the traditional card for father's day I sent my father a letter. My life was going through extreme changes at the time and naturally he and my mother were concerned in a way that serves to remind you that you are someone's child as well as someone's father. In this letter I thanked my dad for always being there, being my lifelong friend, and cautioned him against getting caught up in my current quagmire, assuring him that I as a man now would find my way clear. The life lessons, advice, times shared, the many laughs and love were appreciated and it was important for me to acknowledge to him then what I had never considered until I was myself a father. It's hard to be a good person, role model, caregiver, friend and example; something you inevitably have to be if you are to be a good parent. The important thing was to acknowledge these facts while he was here, and I did. While going through my father's affairs after he passed, I found this very same letter saved amongst his papers, possesions, and photographs. My father never being one to dwell on sentimental matters had in a sense acknowledged my gratitude by virtue of my letter still being in his posession three years after I sent it. I have the letter now, and it serves to remind me of the greater outcome of life when challenges seem overwhelming at times.

We all have a tendancy as we age to forget that we are someone's child still, captured in our parent's minds' as the little persons we once were, full of innocence, love, and of the dreams we once held. I'm reminded of this fact everytime I take time to assess my own childs' life up to this point and just how fast the past seven years have flown by. In my mind she's still that little girl bounding up the school bus steps for the first day of kindergarten three years ago, or the three year-old flower girl spreading roses petals in the afternoon sun in front of the Barnegat Lighthouse for a friends' wedding. I am ever cognizant that these are the fleeting days of my own fatherhood, and how quickly they will all pass and wind themselves into one big ball of memories and emotions to be unraveled as melancholic memories at a later date, God willing. Indeed the fact that most of my memories are probably less defined than my own daughter's will be lends itself to the fact that I was one of five children as opposed to an only child. Still I can remember running around the corner as a child to the drug store on Garret Road in Drexel Hill with my brothers to purchase the obligatory bottle of Old Spice and a card for Father's Day.

Being anything of substance or meaning to a child is hard work. Try being a big brother to a child and keeping a weekly commitment-- it isn't easy, hell try being a babysitter for a day--that'll test your parental fibers. We read everyday about deadbeat dads, abusive dads, and even homicidal dads. This is interesting because in my life the only dads that ever made a difference in my friends, family, and myself were the unselfish, loving, nice, able to laugh-at-themselves dads. Sure I know a few bad dads, but who ever took a page from a bad persons' book of parenting? If nothing else it's fathers like these that serve as reinforcements and confirmation that the day-to-day grinds of just trying to "do your best" is in fact the right way to go. This fact shouldn't ever be underestimated because children see and learn even the most hidden and smaller lessons of a life lived good, fair, and lovingly.

Funny in a way, because my being a father to such a wonderful little girl makes me feel like celebrating her, rather than vice-versa, as I feel like the lucky one. So this Sunday will go as scripted before, the main difference being that Sophie can now make some of my breakfast. We'll go to church and then to the beach and I'll enjoy her company as I remember sitting on the beaches of my childhood with my own dad. The beach always reminds me of my dad, he loved it so, and I'm sure that these endless hours and days Sophia and I spend together on our beach will one day remind her of me too.

I'm quite sure that one can be a good father without ever having had one; I'm even more sure you can be an even better father if you did.

I did, and I am, For this I'm grateful.