Admit it, guys, don't you wish your Father's day agenda looked something like this?
- Wake up at (whenever you happen to feel like it)
- Breakfast in bed (biscuits and gravy, bacon, sausage, eggs with a nice hot cup of coffee and just the right amount of cream)
- Your favorite game, race, or PPV movie on TV
- Shower (optional)
- Move from the bed to the comfy chair for the rest of the game, race, or the next movie
- Mid morning snack (if you got out of bed before noon)
- Foot rub (I did say "don't you wish," right?
- More TV or maybe some video games
- Lunch
- Afternoon nap
- Shower, if you didn't get one earlier
- Afternoon snack
- Some Facebook time
- TV/Video Games
- Dinner
- Dessert
- Beverages of your choice (mine is Diet Coke of course
- Some final time in front of the TV or online
- Evening snack
- Cuddle time with your BFF (you decide what that looks like...)
What do you think? The perfect Dad Day? How about this instead?
Wake up at 7:30 AM to your wife baking in the kitchen. Smells good, but, nope, not for you, at least not for today. Zucchini bread that will be frozen for your vacation trip in two weeks. Your breakfast ends up being coffe and a Pop Tart. Get showered and ready for church so you can be there by 9 AM to set up sound equipment. Get into argument with eldest daughter about whether or not she will be wearing shorts to church. Leave house late and POd.
Get to church to find entire room empty from VBS events the prior week. Set up, set up some more, and set up some more. Run through songs and learn the order as you missed rehearsal Tuesday night because you we're at the ER with your grandmother. Rehearsal goes remarkably well, and your lovely wife has all the right settings for the sound system. Sit down next to eldest daughter and start chatting as if nothing happened prior to leaving for church. Chat with the high school boys that seem to congregate around her. All is well. After prayer and during the morning greeting, you hug 3+1 of your daughters (3 adopted and one 21 year old who gets dad support from you).
Music portion of worship seems to go smoothly and a great Dad's Day sermon (although you wince a bit when the term "biological" father is used to refer to your human dad.) You decide to join the worship team for the Spanish music as well as you know all but one of the songs and you learn the last one while on the platform singing. After music, on to a packed Jr. High Sunday School class with three new students, including your middle daughter who just graduated up from the children's program. (She does a FANTASTIC job in there her first day, BTW.)
After church, you head to Nana and Papa's house for a late lunch (yummy BBQ meat!), some good conversation with all your in-laws (who are the farthest thing from outlaws) a game of Apples to Apples and some pie a-la-mode. You also get to open presents (nope, no ties, a never ending bag of summer shirts-6 in total). After you are done, you head home to drop off your wife and two youngest daughters before heading to the hospital to visit Grandma.
On the way home, your phone buzzes, and it is daughter number 5, another 20 something who appreciates you as a father figure in her life, with a gracious Dad's Day message. You drop off your wife and 2 youngest and head out to Mesa to the hospital with your eldest daughter. On the way there, you listen to her iPod on the radio and chat some.
You get to the hospital and are unable to go into the room as the nurses are doing something that needs a little privacy, so the two of you go sit down at the end of the hall and chat some more. You finally go in and the two of you chat with your 3 aunts, grandma, the RN and the CNA. You find out Grandma may be going home soon and will likely qualify for hospice services because her heart disease is no longer treatable (the medicine was doing more harm than good, and she wouldn't fare well having pacemaker surgery). Because she is only qualifying under this, all of her other medical issues will still be able to be treated! Your eldest daughter is an absolute angel during the entire visit and makes Grandma smile. You head back home, listening to her iPod (I actually think I like Lady Gaga) chatting with her, and crying.
You come home to a yummy dinner of taco salad and homemade guacamole (in the style of the Flying V). At the end of dinner, your wife gets up with a headache, but your daughters help clean up. As you are washing dishes, one daughter heads to bed. You stop her and ask her how her Father's Day was, to make sure ghosts of the past had not been tormenting her. She shares that her memories of her dad are a lot worse than the memories of her mom, so Fathers' Day is much easier than Mothers' Day. You hug her, tell her that you love her and that no matter how many dads she has, you will always love her AND her Heavenly Father will ALWAYS love her even more than ANY man on Earth, father or husband. She goes to bed, and you finish dishes with another daughter sitting reading at the counter behind you.
I can't talk to the end of the day yet, as these events were followed by me proofreading one of Cathy's papers, and typing this post, but looking back, I think today was more priceless than any day being pampered in front of the TV. I don't know about my daughters, but today is one Fathers' Day I won't forget and it had nothing to do with presents and everything to do with the time and conversations we shared with each other today.
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