Father's Day 2012

It’s Father’s Day, 2012. I’m sitting on my deck, cold glass of wine and a pipe at hand. Today has been quiet, and good; I had a wonderful hike with my wife and our dog, at a little known canyon on the east side of the Salt Lake Valley. The hike was in lush, green country, filled with ferns and deciduous trees; oaks, cottonwoods, and maples fill this canyon. In a very short time, we had reached a point where you could not hear any sounds of “civilization.” While it was not an easy hike (we gained 1600 feet in 1 hour); it was well worth the trip.

Perhaps what I enjoyed most about this particular hike was how quickly it brought me back to similar hikes with my children, who are both adults with spouses and children of their own. In the brief time we were the “controlling parents” Kathleen and I tried, with a good degree of success, to instill in our children a love of nature, all its beauty, and the values of being a family, enjoying and understanding life and its rewards. The reward, now achieved, is watching our children now do the same entertainments with their own children, and listening with joy to our grandchildren explaining with happiness the various walks, trips and family camaraderie enjoyed and remembered by all.

More than all of that, however, is the positive feeling I have for the success of our children. They have found love, companionship, and comfort with a person they are comfortable with. Our children have enjoyed becoming adults, spouses, and parents; and really, what more can a father ask for?

Being a parent is not easy! There really are no “guidebooks” for the role we play as parents. We can only try, with greater or lesser success, to bring forth the best we had as youth, and use our best skills to improve on what our own parents taught us. In this process, we analyze what the experiences of our own youth gave us, and selectively use the positive and discard the negative. Certainly, I have watched with pleasure as our children matured and eventually became parents in their own right. They will, I am sure, choose different paths for their families that we did, and I am also certain they will be very successful in their decision.

It’s good to be a father, and even better to be a grandfather! To all of the fathers that read this post, congratulations! I raise a glass in a toast to all of us! (Oh, yes, mothers also, but this is Fathers Day!)
Enjoy!