Happy Father's Day

Today is a day that far too often does not get the attention maybe it deserves. Oh yeah, in May everyone is scrambling around to get a card or order flowers to send off to moms everywhere, and deservedly so. Sure, they gave birth to us, which I hear is a real feat, but let us not forget those folks who contribute the other 50% of our genetic makeup. Of course I sit here at 9pm on Sunday having not actually called home to wish my dad a Happy Fathers Day, trying to figure out why it is so much more difficult for me to pick up the phone and manage a five minute conversation with him than it would be to do the same with my mother.

Growing up, my father worked in a profession that required he be gone quite a lot. I saw him maybe once during the week and on the weekends. So naturally, as a child, I was far closer to my mother. My mom often recalls stories of how I would act around my father when I was young. I basically wanted little to do with him. After all, my mother was a stay at home mom who was there to feed me, bathe me, love me and spend time with me. Dad was just this fellow who showed up every so often and try as he might, couldn't break through the wall I had built between us. Even as I got older and dad worked far less, it was still nearly impossible for us to bond. I played baseball like my brother did, but he never coached my team and I hated the sport altogether. We never really went fishing or hunting or the things other boys my age seemed to do with their fathers. Maybe he knew those were things that did not interest me and so he didn't try. Every now and then I would go off with my dad when he was gone for work and I really did enjoy the time we had together. But even then, it was clear that he and I were worlds apart.

That said, there has never been one day in my life where I felt like he did not love me and care about me. My father, being the butch, Southern country boy he grew up as is an incredibly sensitive and sweet man with a witty personality and an intellect that sadly he never had the chance to use much in life, having gone straight into the army after high school since his family was too poor to send any of the kids to college. I, the youngest of his four children, was born when my father was in his late 30s. This may have added to the distance between us. He tried often to be close to me and admittedly we were not because I never wanted it.

Though he and I have a relationship void of much conversation or really any words between us other than an occasional "how's work" or "have you checked the air in your tires?", he always knows how to say the right thing to remind me that he cares and loves me. When I came out to my parents right after college, I worried a great deal about how he would react. Though deep down I knew that he would not disown me or anything, I worried that my being gay would be something that would drive the two of us even farther apart than we already were. My father, in the seven years he has known I was gay has only said one thing to me about it. The first time I saw him after they knew I was gay, at dinner, he said to me that the only part of me being gay that bothered him was the fact I didn't feel I could tell them. That me being gay did not bother him and that nothing I ever did in life would be enough to make him stop loving and caring about me. And that was all he ever needed to say...it was enough. I only wish I was able to convey how much he means to me so easily. Nothing hurts me more than hearing my mother remark on more than one occasion that my father felt I didn't love him. It wasn't that I didn't love him, maybe I didn't know how, or didn't know how to show him that I did. That continues even until today, with me sitting here knowing that I will not pick up the phone to wish him a Happy Fathers Day and to tell him that I love him. Something I know I should do because regardless of the distance between the two of us, I know that I am lucky to have the father I do, a man who has done nothing in his life but sacrifice for his children and wife and who though was never able to give us all the material things he may have wanted to, made us feel that we never went without. A simple man of few words who deserves so much more love than maybe he ever received from me. I know one day I will regret having not told him the many times I've had the chance how much he means to me. How much he has given me in life. So though I may never call him, and the card I sent may not be nearly enough to show him how I feel...

Happy Fathers Day dad, I do love you very much.