Celebrating Fathers
Father's Day this year is this Sunday, June 15th.
You know.. All the commercials on the T.V. for Mother's day are full of flowers and chocolate and gushing about how much moms, especially working moms, do and sacrifice for their children. But Father's day only makes mention of tools and outdoor-sie crap. It's taken as normal to praise women for keeping up with the 24/7 job of parenting and a full-time job that pays the bills.. But guys can skim by simply paying child support to avoid being labeled "deathbeat dad" or "sperm doner."
Truly Great Dads hardly ever get proper recognition, because nuturing is a 'woman's' job, it seems. Well, I have some news for the advertisers... Dads need lovin' too.
I still refer to my Dad as 'Daddy,' and anyone that knows me knows that he has been, and still is, a hugely influential part of my life. I'm proud to say that I get my quirky sense of humor from my Daddy, and every visit up north back to Maryland requires a stop over at Dad's house for a big hug -- upon arrival, and before leaving.
One of my favorite stories from when I was a baby, is how my dad used to rock me back to sleep when I woke up crying in the middle of the night. He would pick me up and walk up and down the hallway, just walking to rock me and I would settle back down to sleep in just a few minutes. Since he used to travel for work, he wasn't always home and my mom tried to do the same thing, but it only worked with Daddy.
It's hard to say quite why or how my Dad and I developed such a close relationship, only that I know we almost always have. I even remember a very odd conversation surrounding the discomfort of wearing pads during one's period, that he understood because he had to wear similar after a certain operation... >.> (Don't ask me what operation it was, I don't remember that much.)
In my head, my mental image of Daddy is still this big, tall, strong, formitable man who used to pick me up and toss me around like a ragdoll playing games of tickle-monster and greased-piggies (the same game, only at the beach so the 'grease' was sunscreen.) He used to wake us up with Puffin-Attacks (a stuffed animal), make breakfast for my Yellophant (a favorite yellow elephant) along with the rest of us, and in general goof off with the three of us like one big kid. I grew up with Dad being the cook instead of Mom, and I learned to cook in his kitchen. There are certain family-special dishes that no one else knows, that I still look forward to on each visit. And living in our house was an education in comedy, in split-second timing, word puns and running jokes. My dad is still the guy that built us a tree house, complete with a 'secret door' escape in the floor, the guy I spent every thursday night running to get dinner and get to our rehersal for a community theatre production of The Music Man for several months, the one that introduced me to Simon & Garfunkle and the man whose arms I still ran to the first time I broke up with Dilan.
Thank you, Daddy.
You know.. All the commercials on the T.V. for Mother's day are full of flowers and chocolate and gushing about how much moms, especially working moms, do and sacrifice for their children. But Father's day only makes mention of tools and outdoor-sie crap. It's taken as normal to praise women for keeping up with the 24/7 job of parenting and a full-time job that pays the bills.. But guys can skim by simply paying child support to avoid being labeled "deathbeat dad" or "sperm doner."
Truly Great Dads hardly ever get proper recognition, because nuturing is a 'woman's' job, it seems. Well, I have some news for the advertisers... Dads need lovin' too.
I still refer to my Dad as 'Daddy,' and anyone that knows me knows that he has been, and still is, a hugely influential part of my life. I'm proud to say that I get my quirky sense of humor from my Daddy, and every visit up north back to Maryland requires a stop over at Dad's house for a big hug -- upon arrival, and before leaving.
One of my favorite stories from when I was a baby, is how my dad used to rock me back to sleep when I woke up crying in the middle of the night. He would pick me up and walk up and down the hallway, just walking to rock me and I would settle back down to sleep in just a few minutes. Since he used to travel for work, he wasn't always home and my mom tried to do the same thing, but it only worked with Daddy.
It's hard to say quite why or how my Dad and I developed such a close relationship, only that I know we almost always have. I even remember a very odd conversation surrounding the discomfort of wearing pads during one's period, that he understood because he had to wear similar after a certain operation... >.> (Don't ask me what operation it was, I don't remember that much.)
In my head, my mental image of Daddy is still this big, tall, strong, formitable man who used to pick me up and toss me around like a ragdoll playing games of tickle-monster and greased-piggies (the same game, only at the beach so the 'grease' was sunscreen.) He used to wake us up with Puffin-Attacks (a stuffed animal), make breakfast for my Yellophant (a favorite yellow elephant) along with the rest of us, and in general goof off with the three of us like one big kid. I grew up with Dad being the cook instead of Mom, and I learned to cook in his kitchen. There are certain family-special dishes that no one else knows, that I still look forward to on each visit. And living in our house was an education in comedy, in split-second timing, word puns and running jokes. My dad is still the guy that built us a tree house, complete with a 'secret door' escape in the floor, the guy I spent every thursday night running to get dinner and get to our rehersal for a community theatre production of The Music Man for several months, the one that introduced me to Simon & Garfunkle and the man whose arms I still ran to the first time I broke up with Dilan.
Thank you, Daddy.