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Midweek Reflections on Father's Day

ʻIdál (Justice), 14 Núr (Light) 177 B.E. Wednesday, June 17, 2020

Day 17 entry for "The Bard's Hall Contest" .

Four days to Father's Day and counting down. Every where you look on the internet or in the stores (if you go out of the house to go shopping) you find ads for the perfect Father's Day gift. When I was growing up the perfect Father's Day gift was a tie or a fishing rod, depending on what Dad did for a living or liked to do on the weekends. I don't remember any of my school friends asking me what are you getting your grandfather for Father's Day. Most of my friends knew that my parents were divorced, that my mother was the breadwinner in the family, and that the only Father figure I had was Grandpa Frank.

I wasn't the only child in my school who's parents were divorced. I had one friend without a Father in the house and whose mother worked as a waitress. Most of my other friends lived in two parent households with fathers going off to work five days a week, and mothers who remain home as housewives. I don't know if they were any happier than we were. I do know they had fewer financial problems, or at least they appeared to hove fewer. The older I get the more I suspect they had just as many financial problems, and their parents probably argued over money and other stuff. At least there were no arguments between adults in my one parent household. I did have a stepfather, but that is an entirely different story, which I'm not going to go into here.