i’ve had this post in the back of my mind lately, and since i’ve literally been working every waking hour lately, it totally slipped my mind that it’s father’s day this weekend.

i’m new to this whole thing- celebrating father’s day, that is. it was barely five years ago i met the man who contributed a haploid cell that eventually led to my existence. i describe him as such here because, at the time i met him, that is pretty much the only contribution he had made to my life.

this makes picking out a father’s day card a little… difficult. let me go through all the iterations of father’s day cards i have to reject for lack of applicability to the situation:

1. you’ve always been there for me. (well, not really)

2. you taught me so much (uh, indirectly maybe?)

3. i will always be daddy’s little girl (puke!)

4. blah blah blah, lifelong positive influence, blah blah blah. (not quite.)

you get the idea. these are all totally disingenuous coming from me. and i really suck at teh disingenuousness. so i usually just call, and send a little note wishing him a happy father’s day.

now i give the man credit for the last several years. while the circumstances are a bit much to delve into for me, i will just say it took some courage for him to stand there and tell me how sorrowful he was that he missed out on my entire lifetime, wanted to contact me on every birthday but never did, and that he could only hope to try to make up for his mistakes. (and his eyes, when i told him what my life was like. that said a lot.)

that is why i call him dad.

but i didn’t just grow up with a total lack of father figure(s). one man heroically stood in and played father figure every summer for my entire childhood. i call him grandpa.

grandpa taught me how to swing a hammer and turn a wrench. we made fences and fixed machinery together, we changed tires the old fashioned way. we walked over the hill and brought in new calves from the winter blizzards and performed basic care for all the animals together. he took me to the carnival to see the horses every year, and he took me to the fun park- things that i never got to do otherwise. he taught me about life and death, nature and the land, and how hard work and sacrifice would take me anywhere i wanted to go. and so much more. all this knowledge from a man who did not receive a high school education. and the influence it had upon me was tremendous.

grandpa proudly walked with me down the aisle at my wedding.

that event happened in part because my now-husband (then-boyfriend) thought it was astoundingly, mind-blowingly hot that i nonchalantly picked up a ratchet and got my hands dirty with him that one time so many years ago. with him having grown up without his own father, and having a heroic grandpa of his own, that helped us to find a deeper connection that lasts to this day.

my uncle took me berry picking every year since i can remember. we would eat as many strawberries straight from the field as we took home, and supplemented the wild raspberries growing in back of the old shed with handfuls off the canes at the raspberry farm. we would sit atop our respective round hay bales at night and bullshit about life and everything. he let me help fix up his old house down the road from the main family land parcel, and he let me drink a beer every now and then. i have always considered him to be a friend more than an uncle.

both of these men physically towered over me for most of my life. even today, they are several inches taller than i am. (i come from a family of very tall men.) but they really lifted me up with their time and their care for me as a family member, as someone whose biological father abandoned her, as someone who needed their influence. (as someone who had a horrible male role model at home who she wished to forget.)

the men of my maternal family are father figures to me. as are many others who i have looked up to over the years. it takes more than contributing a haploid cell to be a father, but it also doesn’t necessarily require that haploid cell contribution to be a father figure and really change someone’s life for the better.

happy father’s day to the fathers and the father figures who influence our lives.