Father’s day

When I was a child, Father’s Day always brought a touch of pain, an annual reminder of who was not in my life, who did not offer me support, who did not love me. I remember one particular Father’s Day, walking home on what must have been the last day of school, carrying a paperweight rock I had painted. I was eight or nine years old at the time. I was walking with a friend, down an alley behind the school, and she turned to me and asked, unkindly, “Who is that even for? You don’t even have a dad!”

I stood there, gripping that rock, which I had carefully turned into a fish, feeling immediately defensive and very sad. I had been planning to gift it to my godfather, a man I loved deeply, a gruff but kind man who drove buses for a living and brought me the best chunk of salmon when he returned from fishing expeditions, a special piece just for me. A man who lifted me into his lap and read to me on his protuberant belly,  even when I was too big to comfortably fit there. One of the only consistent adult male figures I had in my early years. 

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Unfortunately, the sad shadow of Father’s Day has followed me into adulthood. I wish it were not so, but there is something about growing older that deepens some pains rather than easing them.  

And yet, and yet.

I am married to a lovely man, a wonderful father to my children, a capable loving partner, who literally carried all three of them across the river on his day. A man who is endlessly happy to love them, hold them and call them his own. A man who builds giant swings for them, flips pancakes for them, catches their carsickness in plastic bags, constructs treehouses for them, reads with them, takes dawn birdwalks with them, and sings to them each night as they drift off to sleep. 

And so, while Paul’s fatherhood does not take away my long-held pain on this complex day, it brings me great joy that my own children have the gift of their father. Happy Father’s Day, Papí Pollo, we love you! I am so grateful to be on this parenting adventure with you at my side!