Father's Day 2009

As usual, I'm missing my father, glad to be Lydia's father, and wishing that my father and my daughter had met.

I've been musing about this for a while: do guys say, "I love being a dad" the way some women say, "I love being a mom"? I mean I love being LYDIA'S dad, but it's not the same thing.

You know what cereal commercial I hated? The one for Kix that went: "Kids like Kix for what Kix has got. Moms like Kix for what Kix has not." It seemed to suggest that dads didn't care what was in their children's breakfast food. Not true, and the implication made me a bit peevish.

I really liked traveling with Lydia, just the two of us. Save for a couple 1.5-hour bus trips from Albany to Oneonta and back, we don't travel alone together beyond the routes of the CDTA regional bus system. She traveled well. She was momentarily peeved when I had to put her tray table in its upright and locked position until she realized that EVERYBODY had to do that.

Lydia made me a drawing for Father's Day. Drawing seems to be the gift for every occasion of late: birthdays, Christmas, anniversaries.

From AwesomeStories:

In 1909, Sonora Smart Dodd was listening to a Mother's Day sermon when she wondered why people didn't celebrate Father's Day. After her mom's death, Sonora's dad - William Jackson Smart, a Civil-War veteran - had raised all of his children alone.

To show her gratitude, Sonora worked to have Father's Day celebrated during June - the month of William's birth. She was successful, and the event took place on the 19th of June, 1910. Fourteen years later, Father's Day had become so important in America that President Coolidge recommended it should be a national holiday.

It was President Lyndon Johnson, though, who designated the date as the third Sunday of June and President Nixon who formally instituted Father's Day as a time of national observance.

And ... in case you didn't know ... the rose is the official Father's Day flower. Red is for fathers who are living; white is for fathers who have died.

ROG