Fathers' Day

Sunday just gone was, in case you missed it, Fathers' Day.

I always used to think that Fathers' Day was just another notch on the greetings cards companies bedposts, another time to cajole people out their hard earned to buy cards and expensive presents for their parents. After all, there's Valentines Day, Mothers' Day, and probably more to boot.
In previous years I'd buy my dad a card and maybe a small comedy gadget, and my kids would (under guidance of their mother) get me a card and some chocolate.

This year it was different, well it was for me, anyway.

You see, although I call them my kids they are technically my step-children. Over the last year their natural father has become more and more distant; missing visits, cancelling visits, breaking promises, culminated on un-friending the eldest on facebook and now claiming they're not his. I'm not going to go in to the bad feelings I have towards this man, this isn't about that.
Instead, I'm more joyed at how my kids are handling this; the elder one - now over 18 wants me to adopt them. On technicalities I gather this makes very little substantial difference as they're an adult now, but on an emotional level it means a hell of a lot to me. The younger daughter, still very much a child, is calling me 'Dad', something that's been happening more and more over recent months, and is now the norm rather than an occasional happening. When this first started happening I smiled and the 'mistake' was corrected. Now however I get called Dad a lot more, I'm 'the best Dad ever' so I'm told, and it's the best damned thing a child can say.

So, back to Fathers' Day. I received not one, as in previous years, but two, and a present. I will no doubt gain many more pounds in weight from the candy dispenser I was bought, but the real gift was the two cards; one from my younger daughter telling me how great a Dad I was, and one from my elder daughter, not only saying how great of a Dad I was, but why I was great and how thankful she was that I was there for her when she needed a father.

I had no clue that Fathers' Day was supposed to put a lump in your throat like that. Best Fathers' Day ever!