Monday, June 16, 2008

Happy Day-After Father's Day

Yesterday, for Father's Day, Todd and I hosted the WHOLE group of people we consider family at a backyard cookout. It was busy and hot, and fun and exhausting.

Every time I find myself shopping for a Father's Day card, I feel a bit envious of the easy relationship that is portrayed on those cards. That Hallmark-y, starry-eyed, he's-the-first-man-I-ever-wanted-to-marry-and-he-taught-me-how-to-fish-and-hit-a-softball kind of relationship.

Because I don't know about you and your father, but that's not the kind of relationship I have with my father.

My father and I disagree on a bunch of stuff; big things like politics and religion and politics and life goals and oh, yeah, politics. But I have a tremendous amount of love respect for him. Where he has ended up is so far from where he started that it's astonishing. That journey has made him a man who just brims over with love and kindness and a generosity the likes of which I have never seen in anyone else. And while his is not the life I have chosen for myself, it's nice to get to be a tourist into it once in awhile, and invite him into mine on occasion.

That he loves me unconditionally, I have never questioned. And isn't that truly, at the heart of things, what makes a man a father?

To me, a real father-daughter relationship doesn't make for a very good Hallmark card: too many sharp edges, and corners you don't look at too closely, and fuzzy bits, and sentiments that don't fit into a neat rhyme.

But it's real. And it's better. And really, when I think about it, I'm not THAT envious of the Hallmark fathers and daughters. Softball was just never my thing, anyway.

4 comments:

DSS said...

I"m so glad to know that you feel that way about your father! Real is always better than fairy tales!!!

Jonathan's Mommy said...

Your dad is really great and much better than the fuzzy Hallmark sentiments!

Bryan said...

Hoe about this:

You grew tobacco
while I played Piano
You liked Country
when I liked Bono
While we may disagree
on most political stuff,
I love you, you love me,
and that, dearest Dad, is enough

JBF

Kara Lewis said...

Well, hell, Bryan just said in a few lines what took me a whole blog post to say!