The Third Sunday In June

Father's Day with its greeting card provenance falls tomorrow and in keeping with family tradition I just dropped my dad a belated card in the mail scant minutes ago. My father will no doubt take it in stride when the card with my sentiments written in haste arrives some time next week days after the date it celebrates. I'm a last minute guy when it comes to sending the appropriate greeting card. I've always been so. Perhaps this is due to my missing that sentimental gene which leaves me in no rush to gush with written down emotions. Or maybe its the greeting cards themselves that have me reaching for them at the last minute, for they seldom say what it is I'd like to express. Thus forgoing words from the heart I gravitate towards cards with a humorous bent and mail them off way too late to arrive in time for the noted occasion.

I have in the past on occasion created my own greeting cards with colored pencils, magic-markers, glue and glitter, and images cut from magazines. When I've done so I have always had this nagging voice hectoring me; "They'll just think I'm just too cheap to send a real card." Or I've imagined the recipient judging my hand made card as childish and missing artistic skill.

More often than not however I've let the greeting card industry dictate how I mark the occasion with their either or choices of flowery sentiment vs humor. And usually I've opted as noted for the latter while avoiding as best I could pathos and hollow laughter. For the arrival of a day warranting a greeting card was most often met by my family with a tacit agreement of a timeout from any ongoing familial discord. This is not to say that it was a relentless battle royal under my father's roof. But it does strike me now that quite frequently when it came time to tender a card there were unresolved issues and tensions gripping the household that seemed through the giving of a card to loosen their hold for a twenty-four hour grace period.

So there I was earlier today once again in the greeting card aisle trying to choose out of twenty odd cards one that best said Happy Father's Day in an approximation of my voice. And what did I pick? I went with a card that had a photo on the front of a young boy with a finger up his nose and the message inside stating, "You're right dad. Some jobs are best handled by yourself." I added the sentiment that "Unlike your nose you can't pick your relatives. But if I could, if I had the chance, I would still pick you as my father."

It strikes me now that I made the wrong choice. Rather than weak comedy I should have gone for the Hallmark product with its endearments and unsullied sentiments. I should have overlooked that long ago strife that pitted father against son and purchased a card with a rhapsodizing text, "You were always there for me, dear old dad." But the words lacked for me the ring of truth. And I could not go forward. Had the card only said, "We had our troubles, dad, but I love you none the less," I would have gladly laid my money down. But there were no such cards to be found today. There were only those that spoke of a seamless past, one that my father and I never lived.

Perhaps I should have looked onward and elsewhere and found a card with a neutral image and no accompanying text. I could then write happy Father's Day and sign the card with no lingering doubts of whether or not the card was an appropriate one. But I did not. Acting upon what felt like little more than an obligation, I was after all complying with a national holiday and not the will of my heart, I opted to go for the least objectionable card at hand, one with humorous intents.

Maybe some day and hopefully soon before my father's demise I will reach for a card on Father's Day and not feel governed by a past that by all rights should have been laid to rest long ago. Perhaps this smarting I still feel from childhood's discord is immaturity on my part. I won't argue the point. For the hurt does smack of an old wound that rightly should have healed by now. So who knows? Maybe with a little luck and perseverance and perhaps an act of grace I will be one day be able to offer my father a card that conveys what he extends to me, unconditional love. On this I pray.