When Is Father's Day?

Every June we celebrate Father's Day, often with cards, gifts, or treats. (Hint: Donuts! Dad's really like donuts!)

But, the truth is any father worth his weight in salt (whatever that means) knows that the third Sunday in June isn't any more important than any other day. That's because every single day is worthy of celebrating when you're a dad. Every day is Father's Day.

Father's Day is that first day in the hospital, when the nurse wraps up your newborn baby and asks, "Do you want to hold the baby?" And you don't want to hold her, because she's so tiny and you're afraid you might drop her or hold her the wrong way. But you hold her anyway, because you're a dad now and you're going to have to be the strong one and learn to do things that might scare you.

Father's Day is getting down on your hands and knees at the side of the bathtub and scrubbing all of the chocolate off of your son's face, including the spot behind his right ear and that smudge in his hair. And you marvel at how one chocolate chip cookie with only three chocolate chips in it could create such a mess.

Father's Day is changing a dirty diaper through your daughter's tears and screams, and then holding her up in front of the mirror while doing the Daddy-Daughter Diaper Dance until she stops crying and starts to laugh.

Father's Day is when she looks at you with the same awe and wonder that you have when you look at her.

Father's Day is never getting to go to the theater to see the movies that you want to see, but instead sitting through every children's movie Hollywood releases. All the good ones, and all the many, many bad ones. (Thank heavens for Pixar!)

Father's Day is being the one your kids run to when they see a scary spider. And, even though spiders still freak you out, you act all tough and take care of that spider.

Father's Day is figuring out the one thing that will make each child stop crying and start smiling. It's different for each kid, and it might not work every time, but if you can turn tears to giggles at least two out of three times, it's worth it.

Father's Day is shutting off the Billy Joel you were listening to so the kids can hear the Frozen soundtrack for the 1,219th time. (Sometimes you have to know when to let it go.)

Father's Day is realizing all your one year-old daughter really wants is for you to stop looking at your stupid smart phone for a minute and get down on the floor to play trains with her.

Father's Day is every day.







This post first appeared in the June 2016 edition of the ServeDaily newspaper, and on this blog on 6/14/2016.  Go here for more of my columns from ServeDaily.