My kids can’t keep presents secret. They just can’t. Right now, they’re away with Adam on a beach trip and they keep bringing up the topic of Father’s Day, inviting him to guess what they’re giving him.
Here’s the thing. They have no idea what they’re talking about. They don’t know what we’re giving Adam because I have hidden his presents in our home’s equivalent of Fort Knox, which has a security system made of overgrown dust bunnies. How they get in the attic and got so huge, I have no idea, but they do well in keeping everyone out. I swear one growled at me.
But maybe I shouldn’t say they have no idea what they’re giving him because they DID pick a horrendously messy and involved craft project from a book several weeks ago. It was just before Mother’s Day, and the girls were discussing the very best thing to make for Daddy. Would it be his own pet rock? A footprint T-shirt? No! The sparkling treasure box!
“Hey,” I said. “Mother’s Day is next. Why aren’t you figuring out what to make me?”
But they didn’t hear me. They were deep in discussion of what they’d put inside the box.
And this, I think, gets at the difference between moms and dads. Of course men and women are of equal value as parents. Families today are lucky to have the most-engaged fathers of any generation. But this doesn’t mean moms and dads are the same, and the proof of this lies in the presents.
When my brothers and sisters and I were kids, we once got my mom a set of teaspoons for mother’s day. She cried at our apparent disregard for her. But it wasn’t that. We just had no idea she aspired to do anything other than bake us cookies for our after-school snack. (Also, we were idiots.)
My dad was easier, though. One year I got him a small dogwood tree for Father’s Day. It’s in his garden still, and it gets bigger and more beautiful as time passes—just like my regard for my dad. I knew he’d like it because he often said to us, “I want to leave the world a more beautiful place.” Gardening was his way of doing that.
Though he might have claimed otherwise, the things my dad said to us when we were kids were a powerful combination of law and oracular wisdom. When we stayed up past our bedtime, my dad told us “the authorities” were coming. Sure enough, we could hear their knock on the door, and in a panic, we’d dive under the covers and feign instant sleep. Later, he told my brother that the Elephant Man had a parasitic infection called elephantiasis. Dad was just kidding. But my brother reported it as fact to his seventh-grade biology class.
If Dad believed that gardening was the way to make the world a better place, of course he needed a tree for Father’s Day, just like Adam obviously needs a treasure chest for Father’s Day.
This is the thing with dads. They might take some knocks for doing less of the child-rearing grunt work. They might not be the parent kids run to with scraped knees. But this doesn’t mean dads are second-class parents—or that they’re, in fact, doing any less to make the house a home.
Dads are the ones kids want to please. A homerun counts for more when dad watched it. A dress is prettier when dad says it’s so.
Dads are the ones who know how to put stuff together. How to fix broken toys. How to solve problems.
Dads are strong. They can open jars. They can throw kids high in the air, giving them that giddy sensation that comes when one of nature’s first rules—gravity—is broken.
Dads break other rules, too. They don’t require breakfast be fortified with eight essential vitamins and iron. They don’t care if socks match or if hair is brushed.
But they follow the important rules. They’re loyal and protective. They expect us to tell the truth, and to do what we say when we say we’re going to do it.
And they’re brave. They check the mouse traps. They see what’s making the dog go nuts. They set the spiders free.
It’s no wonder my kids want to give their dad a treasure box. To them—and to me—he is a treasure.
This is why, when the kids get home from the beach, we’ll get out the glue and glitter and we’ll make it. We’ll fill it with whatever strikes them as being objects made of awesomeness, which is probably going to be some messy combination of marbles, robot pencil sharpeners and leaves.
So this year, on Father’s Day, I hope every dad gets something that lets him know he’s treasured. That’s one secret that’s just too good to keep.
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