Happy Father's Day

Every Father's Day I'm stumped at what to buy my father. It usually ends up being a shirt and often some strange thing I found that will amuse him. (I get my personality from my father.) It never seems quite adequate, though.

Monetarily, I don't make nearly enough money, of course. But that's not what I'm referring to. Growing up, I might not have realized it at the time, my father was a great dad.

The best example I can find for that, or the one that usually immediately springs to mind, is a time when my mother was talking to someone about something that happened when my brother and I were kids. She mentioned - off-handedly - that we were poor. This took me entirely by surprise. Us? Poor?

Thinking back on it, I remember having to do without quite a bit. I know my father spent an unhealthy amount of time being laid off (not his fault, mind you). I remember wearing hand-me-downs and rummage sale clothes and never (or at least hardly ever) finding any sort of "name brand" on anything I owned. But "poor"?

When I recall my childhood, I don't think of us as being poor. My parents lovingly provided a roof over our heads, gave us three square meals a day, and gave us as many hugs as we could handle. I never cared for name brands. I'd rather go fishing with my dad than have a pair of Tommy Hilfiger pants.

Heh.... fishing.... I'm firmly convinced that my father never really liked fishing. We'd take a couple of poles to a local creek and sit there for a few hours. All I ever caught were suckers and carp. Maybe, once in a blue moon, I'd catch a blue gill, but that was about it. I can't recall a time since my childhood that my dad has ever gone fishing by himself or even with his 'buddies'. Of course, I could be wrong on that point. However, my father knew what fishing was really about - spending time with your kids.

My father did a lot of things with us when we were kids. On a nice summer night, he and I would go for a walk. I think I still have the scar on my knee from the time he tripped and fell on me while playing kickball with us kids in the back yard. He built my brother and I a tree-house - an honest-to-goodness treehouse! - in our back yard. When the usefulness of his old shed had run out, he helped us turn it into a fort. He helped us raise bunnies, a pigeon, gerbils, fish, and dogs (not usually all at the same time). Heck, I remember one year sitting in our basement watching as an incubator full of chicken eggs started hatching. Or going down to a local field early in the season to find caterpillers and collect them so we could watch them turn into butterflies. Let me just say, to a little girl, a monarch butterfly airing out it's wings for the first time on her finger is magical.

I was not poor. Oh no. I was rich beyond my wildest dreams.

And so, to my father, and every other father out there, Happy Father's Day. And Daddy, I'll always be your little girl.