HAPPY FATHER'S DAY!

Every year I spend the weeks between Mother’s Day and Father’s Day reflecting on the old people.  (Aren't my ma and pa pretty?)  Celebrating Mother’s Day has always come with relative ease.  Gifts for mom were easy.  Spending time with my mother even easier.

 Father’s Day has always been more of a challenge.  By the time I was twelve I’d pretty well exhausted the requisite supply of socks and ties we’d pick out for my daddy.  One year I’d even given him a rock to use as a paperweight.  Not sure whose brilliant idea that was but I’ll take credit for the creativity.  If I recall correctly, it was a pretty rock and I don’t think it cost me more than an afternoon in my mother’s garden searching for the perfect, naturally polished stone.

Over the years the perfect gift has given way to the perfect card.  Depending on whether or not my daddy and I were on speaking terms determined whether it was a Hallmark or just your generic dollar store variety.  Son-shine took gift-giving for his favorite Pop-Pop to a whole new level.  Like two peas in a pod there was no choice the boy ever made that wasn’t his grandfather’s best gift ever, something he’d been wanting since forever.

My sibling and I have very different relationships with our parents.  I believe that over the years, as an adult, I’ve had to work harder at my relationship with my father.  I know that choices I made before I was twenty put a significant wedge between us.  There are moments that I think that we are still butting heads against that wall.

And then there are times when I am very much my father’s daughter, his one and his only Baby Girl, the nickname he still calls me by if he is not calling me by my full name.  When things between us are golden even a Hallmark isn’t good enough for my very favorite guy.  But no matter what the mood of the moment, I cannot deny that the man, who raised me, raised me well.  There can be no denying that my father loves me immensely.  And it has been my Father’s love that has motivated most everything I’ve done and accomplished since I was a little girl.

We have our moments, my Daddy and I.  But there is nothing better than being my daddy’s Baby Girl.  So, to all the father’s out there, HAPPY FATHER’S DAY.  And to my favorite daddy in the whole wide world, I love you very much!