r-l-w.net

FD06

June 28th, 2006

The door hath now closed upon the eighth of that annual memorial known as Father’s Day in which I could not only bestow the wishes appropriate to fathers I encountered during it, but also receive such wishes myself.

Every year I have intentions of documenting and analyzing my experiences and thoughts on this day, but it seems from browsing the arcives (currently kind of fragmented and scattered across various previous incarnations) that my success in realizing such intentions has been inconsistent.

My day started with the presentation of presents and cards. Ruth, as she typically does in her cards to me, filled the thing with her own writing- the exact nature of which we’ll not go into but suffice it to say it’s mostly about how great I am. Gideon picked out a cool one that has construction equipment characters that look very similar to memebers of the cast of one of his current favorite television programs- Bob the Builder. Isaiah never found one that satisfied him, so he made one for me. I like it a lot.

My presents consisted of a number of neat t-shirts and a can of Pringles. I’m not sure what that says about me and my personal style when you analyze it. Hopefully nothing other than the fact that I can be hard to buy gifts for…

Once everybody had wished me a happy father’s day, we all started getting ready for church. After my shower I was getting dressed in the bedroom when through the partially opened door I heard Gideon fussing and Ruth remonstrating him. I went in and saw Ruth looking around for something with an irritated look on her face and Gideon standing in his crib, with an almost-crying expression.

“What’s going on in here?” I enquired.

“I’m mad at mom.”

“Why is he mad at you, Ruth?”

“Because the shoes he wants to wear are too small for him. He wants to wear the black dress shoes, but I can’t even get them on him anymore. I’m trying to find some socks to go with the brown ones,” she muttered as she left the room to scour boxes of stored clothes in Isaiah’s closet.

“Gideon,” I said soothingly “your black shoes just don’t fit anymore. Your feet have grown too much. Here- here’s one of your brown ones. You can wear them today.”

“Otay,” he said sitting down and seeming to get happy, “Get other one, too.”

I found the other shoe and handed it to him and the problem was solved. Well, his part of it was solved. Ruth was still looking for some magical socks that would match his outfit in a manner totally unfathomable to me- not being a girl. The ones she found had to do even though they didn’t look right to her for some reason. I still don’t know why.

After church we continued our Father’s Day festivities in the same way we have done for the past seven years- lunch at the Outback Steakhouse.

That was the end of the real post. I started writing it on the holiday mentioned but didn’t get it finished- that’s why it just kind of stopped without any real ending. I am posting it now to start getting this website back in action.