Our family celebrated the Summer Solstice and Father's Day on Sunday. Having taken part in many such celebrations over the years, I can say it was a fairly representative example of its kind. A family dinner, kids running all over the house and some sentimental but welcome greeting cards hailing me as a sterling representative of fatherhood. Everyone packed up early to get a head start on Monday.
I think it is remarkable my daughters consider me a father to be emulated. Through the early years of their childhoods I was working 6 days per week and trying to keep up with the care and maintenance of a fairly large house and garden after work and on weekends. Also, my generation of fathers were perhaps the last to foist most of the parenting duties on the wonderful woman i married. The Divine Mrs. M kept track of and planned for birthday parties and school activities, was always the go to parent for confidences and was the final authority for transgressions of the family rules. That she also worked during those years is a testament to her abilities.
It was left to me to be an example of the person who gets up every day and does what he or she hopes is the right thing. Rarely if ever missing a day's work. Helping with dinner and insisting everyone sit down together at least once a day and reading to them before bedtime. We plowed through the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy in 5 page per night bites! Perhaps the very fact of acknowledging their importance in my life was in itself an example they measured others by.
Whatever gave them their inflated value of my importance in their lives, I am grateful and will continue try to be worthy of the love and attention my girls continue to show me on a daily basis. Fatherhood is a balancing act I have still not mastered, but will keep trying for the rest of my life. Happy Father's Day to all who feel the same way.
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