Dear Father’s Day;
Why are you so lame? Every year you come around without a lot of fanfare. You sort of creep up on us near the middle of June and everyone seems to forget until it’s too late that we’re supposed to be celebrating you… That is, celebrating us dads.
It’s not fair. We work hard. We have jobs where we put in 40, 50, 60 hours a week, sometimes more. Some of us run our own businesses. We’re providers. And we played a part in giving life to our kids. Sure, moms went though the pain of childbirth, but we planted the seed.
I’ve cleaned my son’s behind a thousand times. I’ve gotten up in the middle of the night a million times to feed, hold, sing, hug, appease, and console my little one. I’ve fed him. I’ve punished him (it hurts me more than it hurts him). I’ve done it all the same as moms do, but they get all the credit. If anyone even notices Father’s Day, it’s usually the car companies. But they take advantage of every holiday. They even have sales for Cinco de Mayo. Yeah, Cinco de Mayo gets way more notice than you, Father’s Day.
So I ask, where did we go wrong? Where did we fathers drop the ball and let every other holiday on the U.S. calendar become more important than you?
Read Related: Father’s Day vs Mother’s Day
Shouldn’t we celebrate the man who fixes whatever breaks in the house, the man who takes out the trash every night, the one who keeps up the maintenance on the cars, the one who spends his Sunday mowing the lawn, the one who is never too tired to cook, or run to the store to get that last minute gift for Mother’s Day?
Shouldn’t we celebrate the man who is tender with his kids, the one who helps them with their homework, the one who takes them camping, offers words of wisdom and is firm with the rules so they will behave?
I know Moms are great. I love moms. And I think they deserve the celebration they get on Mother’s Day. We buy them cards; we buy them flowers; we make them breakfast in bed; take them out for dinner; we buy them presents. At school, the children spend weeks making crafts for their moms for Mother’s Day.
But for Father’s Day, they just whip up some little paper sculpture or a mediocre tempera painting they raced through the previous day. Why?
We’re dads so we don’t ask for much on our day. We’ll happily accept the hug, the kiss, and the cheap set of screwdrivers from Home Depot, even when what we really want is that cordless drill. But why can’t we get breakfast in bed (with a side of bacon, please)? Or case of good beer?
Why isn’t Father’s Day the big deal that it should be?
Probably because as with everything else, we defer to Mom because we were too busy watching the game or playing cards with our buddies. We don’t make a big deal about things. We’re dads. And really, moms deserve the credit and the big holiday because moms are moms. And moms are the best.
But just remember this: without fathers there would be no mothers. And the sink would still have that annoying leak.
