My wife has been asking me all week what I might want to do today … on Father’s Day 2022. She has been telling me that this is my day, she wants to honor me for being a great dad to our children and a great papa to our grandchildren. She wants to do something special, to treat me to something, to share an experience or a special dinner. I seem to be a difficult person to honor. I don’t really want to do much except to spend the day with her … something quiet. I like quiet.
Mostly what I’d like to do is take some time today to offer my gratitude that I am directly connected to other fathers, specifically the fathers of our grandkids, who are doing a phenomenal job of loving, encouraging and enabling the youngest in our families to be the best versions of themselves that they can possibly be. This is something you dream of when your kids are walking down their own wedding aisles. So today, the gift I get to enjoy is gratitude. I don’t want to ever take that for granted.
I understand how fortunate I am … especially in the city that I find myself in at this point of my life’s journey. My morning began by driving with my wife over to another part of our vast neighborhood to pick up the donuts for her coffee shop. Between here and there are very different realities … realities that I am very familiar with but, in the context of my own end of the neighborhood, not always in front of me on the weekends. These are the realities of addiction, mental illness, and living outside. I see this everyday and everyday it impresses on me something else about the human condition. Today, my own Fathers Day gratitude was paused by the reality of countless other individual’s experience. In the pause lives so many questions that we are often too busy or focused or naive or …. to consider.
Questions filled my soul like, “Is that guy a dad … where are his children … are they aware of what is happening in his life right now?” Questions like, “What dreams did their dad have for them that have gone horribly wrong?” Questions like, “Does their dad know where they are?” Questions like “Does he know where his kids are right now … Does he even know it’s Fathers Day … If he does, then does the realization cause more pain, more regret, does it cause him to want to climb up or dig down further?” Questions like, “Does the message on that church sign they are walking by about the blessings of fatherhood light a spark of hope in their soul or dump another bucket of ……… on their heads?”
Once again, I am reminded that these observations, begun with the greatest of intentions, deal more with Hallmark than humanity. Don’t get me wrong, I am all in favor of honoring those who are due honor … even honor on a sliding scale. What I hope for today, more than anything, is that these opportunities bring forth the realization of the human condition. I hope we can internalize that, on the day of our birth, there was promise, there were dreams, there were hopes. This is a nearly universal truth. On days like this one, while reminding us that they have been realized in some stories and not yet in others, may they also remind us more importantly of our common humanity and the value of each story we encounter.