Father’s Day is one of my favorite holidays. The reason is not the gifts or the celebrations but because Father’s Day reminds me of my most important responsibility in life.
This Father’s Day was looking to be very low key compared to the usual festivities. I was recovering from a dental procedure and still on pain medication and my dad was not feeling well, so our plans to get together were not working out. We spent the morning together as a family and then went to my in-laws house for dinner, which included a special Father’s Day play put on by the kids. It is always a lot of fun when the cousins get together. They practiced the play all day and the production value was very good for a basement performance of The Three Little Pigs. Theater is one of the great passions of my oldest daughter so of course she took the reins as the director. If they ever decide to take the show on tour, I will definitely let you know.
My favorite part of the day however was lunch with my kids. We sat at the kitchen table talking, telling jokes, doing funny voices and mostly just acting silly. I made sure to add in the usual “I am your Father” line from Star Wars, which always gets a good reaction in our house. I did have to impart some dad wisdom at one point reminding them of proper manners – even though it was Father’s Day and we were having fun I still have to do my dad duties. I know this will sound corny, but as we sat there, I took time to look at each of them individually, thought about what they meant to me, and tried to take a mental picture of the expressions on their face and what they looked like at that exact moment. I tried to commit the entire situation to my memory so I could draw on it later in life when they are all grown and we no longer see each other for lunch every day.
One of the things I strive to do each day is to stop and live in the moment. I remind myself that while the craziness of our day-to-day life is stressful, it is that exact craziness that I will miss twenty years from now when the house is empty and quiet. This is hard to do and I struggle with it most of the time. The stress of daily life can be all-consuming at times but we have to be careful not to let it control us. When I am older, I do not want to remember how stressed I was at this point in my life. I want to remember how it felt to spend time with my kids, help them with their homework, play a game with them or sit on the couch watching tv and comforting them when they were sick. I especially want to remember the Father’s Day lunch we shared around our kitchen table. I may not remember the date, the year or many other details about that day but I will never forget how I felt at that moment.
This year for Father’s Day my kids each gave me a homemade card and crafts they made for me at school but the real present was the time we spent together and them reminding me how lucky I am to be their Dad.