Father's Day

Today is Father's Day.  My Father continues to live out his vocation with each of his children.  Dad still jokes on the phone. He still listens to our troubles.  He still occasionally for no reason, sends a note and usually a few bills or a check with the closing, "Love and prayers, Daddy."  He still offers me books I have no capacity to comprehend but which I keep hoping one day to understand and he still prays for each and every one of us daily. 

Fathers get a bad rap these days as being unnecessary by modern thinkers.  But I'm betting those modern thinkers ache in their hearts to have those moments Dads, real dads are famous for: grilling food in the winter, organizing football games even when none of the kids are in the mood and marshalling everyone outside for what turns into a weekly event and quiet points with walks in the woods or fishing.  Fathers are those guys that teach their children knock knock jokes and then spend the next twenty minutes listening to their offspring butcher the delivery, invent new punch lines and still, they really laugh. 

I can't imagine trying to fill the space my husband would leave behind if he weren't present in my children's lives.  He stays up past 12 playing games with the three that love cards.  He signs our middle daughter up for softball and goes to every weekend game just for her.  He makes the brothers and sisters bring their instruments to basketball games and play during time outs and drives us to civil war battle fields and gives the historical accounts with fuller detail than the museum.  Listening to their father sing at mass is one of my favorite moments once a week.  It models for every one of them, how much they should participate and lo, the boys who were muttering along are now singing.  

When things are squabbly, he lays down the law with lines like, "Peace through work." and the subsequent assignment of cleaning out the garage, trimming the hedges and pulling weeds or folding clothes.  He invented the wolf council --where the kids howl and assemble and allowances are given and family announcements are made and the laundry system which would work if anyone followed it.   And he prays for each of his children and for me every day.  It takes a decade to get to us all. 

So happy Father's day to my love, to the father of  all my children and to my Father, who helped shape the person I became and model the type of man I should seek and to my Father-in-law, who shaped the man I fell in love with, with his love of history, dedication to his family and willingness to play summers full of whiffle ball and cards with his sons.  I am blessed by all of you.  Love, Sherry