Dear Old Dad
A Special Day of Honor and Barbecues
There’s nothing like being a father and I don’t mean it like there’s no business like show business, I mean there is nothing that compares with being a father, dad, daddy, pa, pops, poppy, padre. You’ve actually made a person, something like God created Adam and Eve so that makes you god-like and I can’t imagine anything that comes even close, except for maybe a tryout for third base for the Yanks.
Everybody should have babies, within reason, of course, I remember the Halls who lived two houses up the street, and there were 11 kids and I couldn’t even remember all of their names, let alone provide financially for them all. I guess they did alright although I never remember seeing Mr. Hall at home and it seemed Mrs. Hall was always pregnant as she practically was and as I think of it, I never knew any of the kids, which is weird and something I never realized. I wonder if the kids were kept shackled in the basement where they were fed a few crumbs and a bowl of water every day but no, that’s impossible because none of the homes had basements. But where were those Hall kids? I guess I will never know but I do remember several very skinny kids in the neighborhood and I didn’t know where they lived.
But what I do know is that you learn things from a child that you cannot learn anywhere else, like mutual, unconditional love, something that we all crave and with kids, at least, we can provide it and get it back. Unconditional love is quite a concept to imagine that you will be loved no matter what you do, you can kill, maim, torture, plunder, rape and you’ll still be loved unconditionally. You may not be liked very much but you will be loved and show me any other situation where the love remains regardless of the bad things that people do.
A child also offers immortality to his father and mother in the sense that the DNA gets transferred from the parents to the children. You look at your offspring and you can see yourself as a child, you can hear what you were like, you can feel what you felt so many years ago and it is yet one more thing that makes having a child completely and utterly unique. There’s also the fact that you have this incredible opportunity to help mold a life, maybe in ways that you didn’t have as a child, as in providing warmth and attention that you might have missed in your childhood or guidance and support to reach any goal, something that was missing from my upbringing. It is certainly a challenge and the rewards are nothing short of incredible. Father’s Day is really a time for fathers to thank their stars that they are fathers and not alone like an island in the cosmos with nothing to carry their DNA forward.
The kind of love between a child and parents is unlike any other form of love. It is a look in the eyes that say you are a protector and a role model, it is an embrace that says you are a rock of reliability, it is a few words that say you are somehow an authority on most everything. And in return, you send a glance that says, God am I grateful that I brought you into the world and you embrace your son or daughter and send the message that it brings you such singular warmth and you utter a few words that can make all the difference in the world between a happy child and one who sees mostly darkness and fear in the world. And watching a child grow is a singular joy and thrill, although not all of the time, but when it’s good, it’s really good to watch your child make the right decision or work hard to attain a goal or just being flat out happy and excited with a future. A child can make you smile in a way that can’t be duplicated or realized anywhere else.
There are lots of very bad fathers out there and I don’t understand how they can squander the one chance they may get for immortality, the one time when there seems to be a meaning to the chaos and confusion of life, a one time when you can awaken every day with the excitement that you don’t have to do anything more than be nice in order to continue receiving the unparalleled gift of being a dad.
Being a father is like getting a ticket to a special club where everyone has the opportunity to languish in the wonder of fatherhood, be part of the infinity and continuity of the universe, a place where it doesn’t matter what color you are, what religion you practice, what place you live, you’re all fathers and you all share the universal responsibility of breathing life into your child and seeing them into the future. Whether it’s tatti, tad, pare, baba, otec, patri, janak, pai, pedar, buwa, haakoro, abonim, otosan, babbo, athair, bapa, apa, abba, banketi, tatay, isa, vader, pai, babba or vader, it’s all the same, just different words for father, the universal symbol of love and accomplishment.
So languish in Father’s Day, maybe just sit in the backyard and be waited on hand and foot, maybe go to the beach and be waited on hand and foot, maybe take a family hike and be waited on hand and foot. You get the point, Mr. Special Dad.
The first Father’s Day was celebrated on June 19, 1910, in Spokane, Wash. The mother of Father’s Day was Sonora Smart Dodd, who was the daughter of American Civil War veteran William Jackson Smart.
Fathers were honored around the nation one time before it was an official celebration. That first unofficial commemoration was held on July 5, 1908 in West Virginia to honor the fathers killed in the Monongah Mine Disaster, the worst in the nation’s history.
But Dodd is credited as the founder of the official national holiday. Her father died when she was 16 and she and her father raised her younger brothers. The idea of honoring fathers came while hearing a church sermon about Mother’s Day.
Dodd persevered and continually promoted Father’s Day around the nation as a national holiday. Finally, after more than 50 years, Dodd’s persistence paid off when in 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed a presidential proclamation declaring the third Sunday of June as Father’s Day. Dodd died in 1978. She also was active in the Spokane chapter of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, something that might not sit well with many current backyard Father’s Day barbecues and celebrations.
Fathers are revered around the world but countries celebrate the day in different ways.
In Brazil, Father’s Day is in honor of St. Joachim, the father of Mary who was the mother of Jesus. In Russia, the celebration started to commemorate the military but evolved to a tribute to all men, known as “Defender of the Fatherland Day.” The French holiday was a marketing tool by a company that makes cigarette and pipe lighters although it also is linked to the celebration of Saint Joseph, the husband of the Virgin Mary. In Thailand, fathers are honored on the birthday of King Bhumibol Adulyadej and in Germany, fathers celebrate on Ascension Day by hiking and drinking.