It’s Fathers’ Day – I’ve enjoyed breakfast in bed and gifts of a turkey baster and a slingshot monkey (if you have to ask, you just don’t GET me like my family). Then church, followed by a pleasant grilled chicken with my Dad and the rest of the family. All that before coming back home to settle in for spectatoring golf and checking email. Life is good for the Daddy.
In She Still Calls Me Daddy, Robert Wolgemuth continues the story that drew me in before Cammi was born. In that first one I read almost twelve years ago, he told of raising two girls with no clue how to do it. Now, he’s telling the story of setting them loose on the world – walking them down the aisle and into the arms and protection of other men. My daughter still has a long long long way to go to get to that point, but I appreciate that the journey is what it is, and the destinations along the way are worth building toward and preparing for.
I like his writing style, sharing the stories of family life in a way that brings the reader in without a sappy sentimentality that weighs down other books. That means alot to me as a Dad – wanting to be real about life, wanting to be genuine and sincere, without having to build anything up too far emotionally or manipulatively to make a point here and there. You can tell that he loves his daughters, and perhaps more than that, you can tell that he loves the women they have become and the lives they are building with their own husbands, their own kids, their own families.
And that’s my take away here – as our own children are growing up in our home, are we helping them process and decide, live and fail, risk and play with the knowledge that Mom and Dad will always be there, will always encourage and cheer, will always cover and heal? Those are the kinds of things that don’t really stop when they reach that time of leaving-the-nest. There’s a transition to be sure, but can we still be the loving parents wanting the best for our kids and their lives still to come?
Happy Fathers’ Day – now go read a book.
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