Fathers

Happy Father’s Day to my friends who are fathers.

Some of you are spending today with your children. Some of you are celebrating from thousands of miles away. Some of you have relationships that have been strong for years. Others have walked hard roads and found your way back to one another.

I hope today is a good day.

I hope you know your children are watching, even when they pretend they aren’t.

I hope they notice the phone calls, the advice, the sacrifices, the showing up, the worrying, the teaching, the cheering from the sidelines, and all the other things that often go unnoticed until years later.

In a few minutes, I’m going to call my stepdad.

He and my mother haven’t been together since I was in middle school, but that never changed anything between us. He helped me with homework all the way through college—all three rounds. He supported me even when he didn’t understand every choice I made. He gave me room to figure things out for myself, even when he could see I was about to learn a lesson the hard way.

He’s a writer, an intellectual, a philosopher, and one of the smartest people I know. He can talk football and philosophy with equal enthusiasm, which some people might argue are the same thing anyway.

He loves crossword puzzles.

He makes me laugh, and one of my favorite things is making him laugh right back.

He’s not especially huggy or sentimental, but he’s also never been afraid of his feelings. He’s never been afraid to cry when something deserved tears. He’s never been afraid of much really. And he’s never been afraid to be exactly who he is.

But neither is he perfect.

More than anything, he taught me that it was okay to be exactly who I am, too. And that I don’t have to be perfect.

Later tonight, I’ll take a priest friend to dinner.

I call him Father. Sometimes Padre. Always friend.

And that feels fitting for today.

So here’s to the fathers. The stepfathers. The adoptive fathers. The spiritual fathers. The men who showed up and stayed.

Happy Father’s Day.

💖 Gray