A Father's Day Wish

Happy Father's Day to all of those great men who happily answer to the name "Dad" and who couldn't imagine life without the people (little or long-grown) who call him that.

Father's Day has long been an awkward and mostly overlooked holiday for me.

No year though has been more awkward than this one. Short of dying on my birthday, my father found an even better way to imbed himself in my thoughts – by dying the week before Father's Day.

Hug Dad. Last-minute gifts for Dad. What did you get Dad this year? I've been under continuous assault of reminders via television, email and other online channels. I've probably thought of my father more in the last week than I have in the last 10 years combined. 

Not all of it has been pleasant, but even I have to smile at some of these images. Even if this shot, which I think is the first ever of the two of us together, seems to show that things got off to a less than happy start.

Some of these other shots though, well, they look like ones you'd expect to see in a family album to illustrate a loving relationship between a father and his child.

There are more shots like this than I thought there'd be (a dozen or more, easily)  but nothing after about age 4 or 5. Nothing. Talk about a life just stopping.

I wish I could remember these images as more than a sweet little moment in time, forever captured. Maybe though it's best that that's all they are, lest even that be ruined somehow by reality. So, I'll take them at face value, be thankful they exist … and smile at them. Happy Father's Day, Dad.