Random thoughts loosely connected by the subject of Father’s Day.

1.  They showed this video in church today.  It’s been bouncing around on Facebook for a while now, so this isn’t the first time I’ve seen it, but this time it did spark a couple of thoughts.  Did you notice the lack of mothers in many of the videos?  And did you notice that in a few of the videos, Dad is saving the kid from a danger for which Dad is at least partly responsible?  There is a valuable lesson here.  To be a great father, you don’t have to be a great parent.  You just have to be great at damage control.

2.  Today is the 106th anniversary of what is generally believed to be the first Father’s Day celebrated in Spokane, Washington.  While Father’s Day is pretty well ingrained in the culture these days, it shouldn’t be forgotten that, as holidays go, it’s pretty much an afterthought, a hastily thrown together contraption that didn’t officially become a holiday until 58 years after Mother’s Day came into being.  As any father worthy of the title will tell you, that’s exactly as it should be.

3. Regardless of what the calendar says, my Father’s Day was last weekend, when I flew out to Spokane, not to commemorate the first Father’s Day, but to see my son Ian get his Master’s Degree from Eastern Washington University.  I had a great time (and it was great to get away from the Kansas summer heat for a few days), but it comes with a certain amount of wistfulness.  For guys over 50, second guessing of decisions made while in the midst of fatherhood is more common than erectile dysfunction (or so I hear; I wouldn’t know anything about that myself).  I do it.  My dad did it and I suppose his father probably did, too.  When my father confessed to believing he’d made mistakes in my upbringing (I think he’d just turned 60, a milestone that might have precipitated this reflection), I told him to knock it off.  We all do the best we can with what we’ve got and I thought he did pretty darned good as a parent.  I think I told him that second guessing was a waste of time.

I suppose it shouldn’t be surprising that I caught myself having the same conversation with Ian a few months ago.  Ian handled it much differently than I did.  While assuring me that he thought I’d been a good father, he followed that up by telling me he forgave me for any mistakes that I had made.  I believe that I couldn’t have asked for a better answer or, for that matter, a better son.

4. Ian is my step-son and I’ve only been serving in the father role since he was eleven, when Brenda and I got married.  Before we got married, I was given a couple of books on blended families and raising a step-son.  I suppose the books had some value and I don’t want to diminish the thought behind the gift, but as a new father (or even step-father), you’d better understand that you’re going to have to figure out a lot of this father stuff on your own.  Books can tell you what the challenges are, but what they don’t tell you is that sometimes the challenges happen simultaneously, or sometimes they’re exacerbated by events unconnected to the father-child relationship, or sometimes you have a child that doesn’t fit into any kind of a mold.  You’re best off just making the best decisions you can and praying a lot.  Let me rephrase that:  PRAYING A LOT.

If I was in the parental advise business, I think the only thing I’d be willing to commit to is that there’s no substitute for time.  Ian was heavily involved in drama while he was in high school.  Going from dress rehearsal to closing night, by the time the play was done I could pretty much recite the lines better than the actors could.  That kind of commitment isn’t all it takes to be a good father, but it’s a start.