Why Father's Day always makes me blue

I’m not sure why Father’s Day always makes me blue.

A writer’s website asked me to compose a short piece about Father’s Day. I know I’m destined to disappoint them.

I think they’d like me to write a literary cheerleader about how much I love the day when I can bask in the affections of my daughters and how that one day keystones the central role of my existence.

I just can’t do it.

It’s odd, I know, because I egotistically believe I am the world’s most exuberant father. As evidentiary proof, I offer my sorry bank account.

It’s impossible to calculate how far behind I am professionally because of the two tiny time bandits for whom I am responsible.

I’ve written about it often and will continue to do so because I can’t forget the time when our oldest was 4 and I overheard her and her little buddies reporting what their daddies did for a living.

One said hers fixed cars. Another said her daddy built homes. The little red-haired neighbor said her dad was a dentist.

What did Josie’s daddy do?

“He plays with me.”

I remember thinking, man, that’s not going to look good on the loan applications.

That’s just what she thought I did. She never saw me doing any work and any time she’d march into my old basement office with her Barbies and her imagination I’d slam the lid on the laptop and the two of us would sail off to Fantasyland.

But I’ll have lived a life fulfilled if the aforementioned anecdote winds up in the first paragraph of my obituary.

I’m always broke, but my daughters know they are my priority. My euphoric love for them dominates my entire existence 364 days a year.

But on Father’s Day I’d rather they go with their mother to visit her father so I can be left alone.

On Father’s Day I like to think about my father.

His 2004 obituary said he was an optician. To reduce a man’s life to a petty occupation is pathetic tribute.

What did he do with his life?

He played with me.

He taught me how to play catch, ride a bicycle and swing a golf club. It was on his lap where I learned my enduring love for simple pleasures like watching a good movie or any baseball game.

He taught me the importance of family and that being a good father was more important than being a good optician, which he, indeed was.

He taught me no man is better than any other merely because of what’s in his wallet. 

It was because of watching him that I learned just how much shoestring fun this world can be and what a difference it makes if when you ask someone, “Hey, how you doing?” you actually care about the answer.

Here’s what we’d do this Father’s Day if he were still around: we’d be sitting in our homes about 50 miles apart watching the U.S. Open -- no hugs, no cakes, no cards.

We’d be calling each other every 20 minutes or so to talk about the golfers, the course and how much we were looking forward to the next time we could golf together.

Golfing with Dad was to me like church is to other people only with beer and fart jokes.

He very well might have been the most fun man who ever lived. I’ll always remember his funeral as his last and best party. It was a carnival of love. He is much missed by many.

Having him for a father is a prevailing blessing of my life.

I didn’t need Father’s Day to remind me of that. We’d didn’t need to make an appointment to see each other for just one day a year when the people who make greeting cards say we should.

So please excuse me if my smile seems forced on Sunday when I unwrap the inevitable “World’s Best Dad” coffee mug. I’ll patiently listen to the girls read the cheerful crayon notes telling me just what makes me so special but, honestly, my heart won’t be in it.

My mind will be elsewhere

Father’s Day is maybe the only day of the entire calendar year when I don’t feel like being a dad.

I guess I just wish I could still be a son.




Interested in reading more about Paul Rodell? Check out the Pittsburgh Magazine story I wrote about him in 2004. They flattered me by headlining it, "The Life and Death of Joe Pittsburgher."

Our opposite daughter

I’m standing outside the glass wall looking at a roomful of frightened 4 and 5 year olds and one very alarmed supervisor when an alien thought enters my mind.

“So this is what it feels like to be a pervert.”

The children have clearly been well-schooled when it comes to dealing with suspicious strangers. They’re backing away toward the far wall and looking to the adult for safety instruction.

One heroic boy looks ready to break free from the grocery store child care center and dash over to Aisle 7 for defensive cutlery.

Me, I continue to kneel down and make more desperate funny faces and hope maybe -- maybe -- the world’s most confounding daughter will bail me out and acknowledge that, yes, that’s my Daddy.

Fat chance.

This is the fourth time this has happened. My wife and I have taken separate cars to the grocery store. Val puts Lucy, 4, in the play room and begins her solitary shopping.

I sneak in and hope to surprise the kid by making her smile with my goofy antics on the other side of the secure room’s glass.

Instead of, as normal daughters do, lighting up with surprised joy at seeing her great big buddy clowning just for her, she freezes, her face betraying zero recognition.

I’ve read enough news stories to know what strangers think when they see a child react to an adult like this. So has the supervisor.

“Danger! Creep! Pedophile! Snatcher! Tase! Mace! Knee testicles!”

It’s very disconcerting for a father who considers himself the World’s Best Daddy and was given a beer mug to support the egotistic contention.

I can’t believe she’s already so subversive that she is pranking me -- and it’s a prank I’d admire because it’s highly embarrassing.

But there are indications this is exactly the kind of girl she’ll grow up to be.

The first daughter, 10, played by all the rules. We knew which actions would trigger which emotions.

This one has a nasty streak that emerges at odd times.

I remember when she was 3 and quietly playing with her dolls. She was chirping sunshine to the tiny figures as she moved them about the dolly dance floor. I felt swept up by the emotion of watching her play.

I knelt beside her, my heart swelling with parental affection, and gushed, “Lucy, you are so beautiful!”

Her face reddened, she quietly turned and seemed to rise up the size of a Sasquatch. Her voice quaking with anger, she unleashed what to her was the most stinging insult she could conjure.

“No! YOU’RE beautiful!”

I’ve been called worse.

I like to play loud rock around the girls in hopes it’ll take root as a musical disinfectant when they’re exposed to all that godawful Disney crap.

I remember the time The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again” was playing. I was holding her in my arms and singing the righteous anthem that always gets my pulse pounding. I held her little face close to mine and sang the euphoric chorus: “We won’t get fooled again!”

Without emotion, she looked at me with dead eyes and prophesied, “We WILL get fooled again.”

So we sense she’s an opposite daughter. There are many inherent risks raising a child who always does the opposite of what you tell her to do.

It bends all your instincts of perceived wisdom. 

You tell her to, go ahead, it’s fun to play with Nana’s heirloom vase and, no, the hot stove won’t hurt you, darling.

The biggest concern is, gee, one day she will doubtless cease her oppositions and do exactly what you tell her to do.

Knowing this, the girl we named Lucinda and often call Lulu, will likely do it at some all-school assembly when the children are asked rah-rah questions about how they intend to grow up and contribute to society.

She’ll say, “My Daddy tells me I’ll need to always remember to be mean, lazy and do lots and lots of drugs!”

She is, indeed, a Lulu.

I think she ignores me at the play room window because she just loves her Mommy so much. When she’s been left alone she doesn’t want to see me.

She wants to see Mommy.

Thus, it’s essential I stay on Mommy’s good side.

It’s one thing when I’m standing there explaining to the play room supervisor that I’m Lucy’s dad, I’m not a pervert and my loving wife will be here any second to prove it.

But I don’t know what I’ll say the day Val walks up and delivers a line I’ll still, even in handcuffs, have to admire for reasons of subversive genius.

“I’ve never seen this creep before in my life.”