Today was my eleventh Father’s Day, and one of the best. I had been gone since Thursday for a bike race – too long, and full of missing the girls. I got home today just before the sun-baked girls and Shannon came back from the pool.
We had a great couple hours doing this and that while I unpacked from the race; I loved hearing their breathless recaps of all the goings-on while I was gone. (True to form, Shannon kept them very, very busy the whole time I was gone!) Listening to their rapid-fire, overlapping stories is to me the essence of fatherhood: not exciting or even notable, but pleasant and normal and good. One of the many things that the girls were excited to tell me about were their Father’s Day gifts and cards, which they finally shared with me after dinner:
In addition to a package of coffee and a gift card to a local coffee joint, the girls and Shannon made a "candy bouquet" and each girl made her own cards slash gifts: a buffalo-themed card from Vivi, some art and a card from Julia. (Shannon’s card jokingly entitles me to be right for 24 hours. Little does she know I’m going to parcel out those 86,400 seconds in ten-second chunks over the rest of my life.)
All in all, today was a great Father’s Day, and a wonderful reminder that it’s good to be a dad!