As Father’s Day approaches, sons and daughters will view the day from different perspectives. A hug from a daughter can be one of the most intimate and caring demonstrations of love between two humans. A hug between father and son is probably one of the most awkward acts any man will ever perform.
A daughter will put some thought into a gift for Father’s Day. She will look at the new fashions, and may often try to introduce something new and daring into Dad’s wardrobe.
She will spend a considerable amount of time at the card rack, reading the verses searching for the sentiment that best describes the relationship between her and Daddy.
A son won’t usually spend that much time. Maybe punch Dad on the shoulder followed by, “Happy Father’s Day, Pop.” If there is a card there will be no trace of a sticky verse that may include the word love.
Noted radio personality and philosopher Garrison Keillor offers: “The father of a daughter is nothing but a high-class hostage. A father turns a stony face to his sons, berates them, shakes his antlers, paws the ground, snorts, runs them off into the underbrush, but when his daughter puts her arm over his shoulder and says, ‘Daddy, I need to ask you something,’ he is a pat of butter in a hot frying pan.”
Of course it is different when our children are small, when our sons have us up there on a pedestal with Spiderman, Batman, The Hulk and other super heroes. I still have some cards my sons made me in elementary school with hand-drawn fire trucks or firemen on the front and amazing verses on the inside.
I wonder what a hand-made card might look like if they made one today.
My friend Capt. Gerry Collins of the New York Fire Department was working on the pile of World Trade Center rubble a month after 9/11. The procedure was set that if a personal item was found, the location was marked and numbered and the item was bagged and the number and location was recorded.
If a body part was found, an air horn would sound and a more intricate procedure was carried out.
Capt. Collins recalls one day when the air horn sounded. A rescuer hadn’t found a body part but he had located a small clay ashtray. It was hand-painted blue and scrawled inside were the words, ‘Happy Father’s Day Daddy.’ Amidst all that death and wreckage of twisted metal, it had survived, unscathed.
Strong men removed their helmets and wept.
Carlo Collidi, the author of ‘Pinocchio writes: “Today at school I will learn to read at once; then tomorrow I will begin to write, and the day after tomorrow to cipher. Then with my acquirements I will earn a great deal of money, and with the first money I have in my pocket I will immediately buy for my papa a beautiful new cloth coat. But what am I saying? Cloth, indeed! It shall be all made of gold and silver, and it shall have diamond buttons. That poor man really deserves it; for to buy me books and to have me taught he has remained in his shirt sleeves... And in this cold! It is only fathers who are capable of such sacrifices!”
A man’s children and his garden both reflect the amount of weeding done during the growing season.
At least that’s what McGregor says.