FATHERS DAY IS NOT JUST A CARD

One more Fathers Day across the land. A day to remember our fathers, yes, but also to remember we fathers first were sons...

So while our children do us honor this day, we can't (and shouldn't) forget our own good fathers. In a mom-centered society, dads are often an also-ran. I can live with that as a culture, but not as a son. Not when it comes to the man I call Dad. Whatever good I may be today, so very much of that flowed straight from him.

Correction....!

It wasn't so much straight like it was from a loving hands-on Mom. More often it was in-direct, as in the case of an occasional smile, a surprise wink, an extra-tight tuck of my bedtime blanket. You see, the fathers in my time would in this time be labeled "absent fathers." They usually weren't there to play catch...to build stuff...to join in supervised hikes and games and father-and-son events at the local community hall.

My Dad, like most dads in those days, was absent because he was working 10-12 hours a day to bring home -- as we would say -- the bacon. They weren't our buddy or our coach or our troop leader. But they did love us, because -- as we would say -- their actions spoke louder than their words. The bacon was always on the table!

A father's love is quintessential, be it boldly expressed or gently implied. Long before George Santayana said, "The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the old man who will not laugh is a fool," my Father showed me what this meant. How well I showed him what he meant to me is open to a debate which has no winner. But there was and is no debate that I did.

It goes without saying -- but I'll say it anyway -- we sons have some regrets about our fathers. Perhaps most of them come in the form of unasked questions: What were you thinking and feeling when you were my age...? When and how did you first know you were in love with Mom...? Can you remember everything that happened the day I was born...?

If you still have your Father with you, I envy you. You at least have time left to ask. Don't wait any longer.