Dads and kids and the ties that bind

Is it Father's Day again?

Then it's time to put aside politics and war and peace and think about the things that really matter - like family and family ties and the ties that bind.

I wish I still had a father to celebrate with on this day, but as you know from reading this column, I don't. It would be great to laugh together again about all the good times we shared, and to say thanks for the lessons in life patiently - or not so patiently - taught to me when we both had "better" things to do.

Turns out, there really is nothing better than being with your father or your mother and learning how to cook pancakes (not too thick, not too thin, just so) or how to put a worm on a hook so the fish you aim to eat for dinner won't make off with a free meal for itself instead.

Unfortunately, too many of us realize this after it's too late to make use of the knowledge. My father and mother are both gone now, but my love for them is not.

So this Father's Day I will do what I am blessed and happy to do - spend the day with my own two children, and let them love me as only young children can, so that one day they may have a memory to cherish when I am gone. And so that one day I will have memories of them after they have moved on.

It is a day to take note of a special connection, but it is the connection that matters more than the day. We are all links in a chain, and whatever tugs me back into the past is also felt in my children's future. I must remember that, and I must try to grab hold of those phantoms of yesterday long enough to give them some shape and substance so that my children will see where I came from, and where they came from, too.

How proud grandma would have been to see Meredith's first dance recital this month! Even today, she would have been showing Mere a tap step that she had learned when she was taking lessons 70 years ago.

How proud grandpa would have been to see Carmen's first rainbow trout! There would have been many more of them if grandpa had been there to teach the fine points of fishing instead of just Dad.

I wish I were a better story teller, but I am not, so there are few anecdotes to pass on about grandma and grandpa, few hard and fast lessons, but love is the coin of the realm and it cannot be counterfeited. It is that love from grandma and grandpa which I dutifully pass on to my son Carmen and daughter Meredith, and which I hope someday they will be lucky enough to send ahead to another generation like a small rock skipping on a shiny sheet of still water. Plink. Plink. Plink. The rock skips ahead so fast and so far that sometimes we lose sight of it entirely, then just see the widening ripples that are left behind.

But those ripples are all that matters.

Today, my children honor me with their laughter, their capriciousness, their enthusiasm, and I honor my parents once more for the gift of life they gave me.