What I Really Want from My Grown Sons on Father’s Day

All in their 30s, this is my wish for that special day, the red-headed stepchild of holidays. My wish is not expensive. It’s not hard to make. But it’s all I really care about.

A handwritten card or letter. That’s what I want.

As I’ve migrated into my mid-sixties, I’ve become the worst gift-receiver ever. Yes, I’ll act surprised or amused or touched by your gift. I’ll finger the little thing as if I had been dreaming about getting one for months. I’ll might even gush, “How did you know...?”

But no, I’m sorry, most likely I won’t actually like it. Or it won’t fit right or it will highlight something about me that I don’t want highlighted (like my vanishing muscles). I’m sorry, I’m the worst gift-receiver ever. I’m even bad at buying stuff for myself. My pickiness has reached feline-levels.

But a personal note from my grown sons on Father’s Day…now I can dig that.

I’ll take a letter about what you’re experiencing in your job right now and how that reminds you of something we talked about fifteen years ago (like being on time, doggonit) — something that at the time you thought was stupid or frivolous or old fashioned—but now see as on-target. Yeah, that’s fathering gold right there.

Or maybe a thought about what it’s like for you to be a father now. How it makes you appreciate how we were together, and maybe some of the sacrifices I made to provide for the family, or the efforts I made to build a memory, like taking you on FSBTs (father-son-bonding-times) to the beach so we could surf and how that gives you ideas about what you can do with your son—yeah, that’ll bring a tear to my eye.

Or perhaps a comment about the kind of grandfather I am and how much it means to you to have someone like me in your daughter’s life. And how it makes you feel more connected to me, seeing the full circle of things, seeing how much we are alike, and seeing yourself in her — yeah, I’ll take that any day of the year.

Or maybe recall that talk we had at In-N-Out that one Sunday afternoon when you told me you couldn’t be part of our church’s youth group anymore because you didn’t want to be a hypocrite and how our talk and that decision taught you to be true to yourself and to God and to not fake it, ever—yeah, that would for sure bring tears to my eyes.

Or you could share how cool it was last weekend to win a pickleball tournament together, fighting so hard in that final match after losing the first game, both of us strategizing with your brother on the changeover, pumping our fists as the tide changed, you becoming a lobbing fool to mix things up and throw them off, and us charging back to victory—that’s something I’ll never forget.

I know, I know, with all this Hallmark-level sentimentality I deserve a slap in the face. Normally you’d be right and I’d hold my cheek up to you. But I guess I feel like I’ve earned the right to be a little sappy after what I’ve been through with all three of these knuckleheads. We went through hell together, my sons and I. And that is not hyperbole.

But we’re on this side of it now.

I also know I’m not manipulating my boys. I’m not hoping they’ll somehow read this before Father’s Day and take the hint. No! I already get these handwrittens; this is already a pattern for us.

I don’t think a father can ever hear enough of what his son remembers. We all need reminding that the lonely, uncertain, marathon of fatherhood can be otherwise. (…I think I just lost a few would-be fathers with that description.) How much will they remember? What really matters? Is the one-way giving ever going to end? How do I invest so much only to have to let go one day?

Well, as a father of three, ages 35, 37, and 38, yes, the giving boomerangs back; reciprocity enters the relationship; gratitude seeps in from their side to yours. And no matter how much handwringing you might have done in past years, no matter how many regrets you nursed in the middle of the night, for some of us, for the lucky ones of us, it comes back around.

I know full well that this is not the experience nor the desire of every dad. And after my dark period when anyone who told about his “great family” I wanted to punch in the gut, I hesitate to even share this essay. But here it is. This is my story. And this is one man’s wish for Father’s Day.

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