Father's Day (Belated Edition)

This was the first Father's Day I've spent without my own father, who passed away from pancreatic cancer in October. A week or so ago, I figured this year's holiday -- such as it is -- would be shitty and that I'd spend the day brooding over my loss, kicking the dogs, growling at the world and making the wife and child miserable. To my mild surprise, I didn't. I thought about Dad all day long, but I spent the day much as he would have. Father's Day was never much of a big deal when I was growing up, mostly because Dad was the mildest, most laid back person I've ever known, and he genuinely didn't take these things too seriously. We'd give him his cards and maybe an absurd coffee mug to add to his collection, but otherwise it was no different than any other Sunday.

I remember once, though, stumbling on a collection of Father's Day cards that he'd stashed away on his office desk in the basement of our house. He'd kept years worth of these things -- cards that my mother had picked out for us, or ones that we'd eventually chosen on our own, filled with the simple, generally illegible signatures of his four children. At some point, I'm sure, I must have forgotten to send him a card. Maybe in college, maybe while I was in graduate school. Who knows? I doubt he would have noticed, just as I'm sure he'd have forgiven us for overlooking his birthday, which I actually did two years ago, the last birthday he'd celebrate before the sickness beset him. For Dad, Father's Day -- or any other day he spent with his kids -- was only incidentally about him.

Now that I have a daughter of my own who's old enough to scribble on the inside of a card, all of this is so much clearer. I have a small stack of cards now -- well, one to be exact -- but I'm saving it, as I will all the rest. But the cards won't be a reminder of the Father's Days themselves, but rather they'll remind me of all the rest, the 364 other days that make me feel like one of the most fortunate people on the planet.

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Father's Day (Belated Edition)

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