Father's Day...

It rolls around each year. The day we are meant to celebrate our fathers. Praise them to the skies. Buy them useless presents like socks and chocolates and soap on a rope (who on earth invented this and why!) And if you are a father you are meant to sit back and lap it all up.

It's a day that frustrates me like Mother's Day and to a certain extent, Valentines Day. These Hallmarked days that tell you who to praise/ love and if you haven't got a father/ mother / lover or if you aren't yourself a mother/ father/ lover ..how much of a loser you are.

Don't get me wrong it's always nice to get a phone call and a visit from your children, but that is just lovely on any day. Not a specifically designated day chosen by a commercially avid world.

Rant over.

I did phone my father on this special day. Had thought of a visit but due to my heavy cold and the fact that he's only recently out of hospital, figured it wasn't the best idea.

Then I became designated driver (complete with a cap that I could doff and occasionally mutter 'Yes Guvnor' ) while Daughter and S.I.L took Hubby out for the day.

He so enjoyed it.

Perhaps because he spent time with us.

More likely, because there was alcohol involved.

Quite a bit of it.

It was a lovely day.

Good food and good company.

It was only later while talking with a friend about the day did the words 'I don't remember ever living with my father' were uttered.

They stopped me.  I grew up with a father. He worked hard, often away from home when we were younger but he was there. A part of our lives.  He was strict and expected a certain degree of behaviour from us.  But he also did things with us. We fished and walked, gardened and built. He read to us at night from a huge book of Grimm Fairy Tales. The real dark fairy tales that I think inspired a love of reading horror into my sister and myself.

I couldn't imagine a life without having a father. But then my friend can't imagine a life with one.

It teaches us not to take anything for granted. 

I said before that my father was recently in hospital, for a moment there we were preparing to say goodbye. Thankfully he's pulled through and has recovered enough to go home, but it was a tough few weeks for a while. 

It makes you stop and look back. Memories of times, both good and bad. No one is perfect. 

I think I take more after my father than my mother. I look like him and we both have this reclusive gene. Have difficulty in social occasions and would rather potter alone in the garden than be surrounded by people.

However that line 'I don't remember ever living with my father' stays with me. I have to use it. Somehow, somewhere. It stirs my imagination. Makes me think 'what if...'

This is Dad and myself. I like to tell myself this was before the other three siblings came along, when I was the one and only, the apple of his eye. 

Mind you, he's the first to tell anyone of the day I was born and how I looked 'just like a skinned rabbit.'

Thanks Dad...thanks 

Vicki