Articles of the Month

June: The Month of the Father

As June is here, I believe it's time for everyone to take a step back and show some appreciation to one of the people who have helped us get to where we are today: our fathers. It's sad that for only one day out of the year we truly appreciate and honour our dads when they have done so much for us. My dad has always been a pillar of support in my life; he has been there to clean up scraped knees when I was five and to move me out of the house into an apartment when I was twenty-two. He has always been there but I don't know if I have ever expressed to him how much I appreciated him being there and involved in my life.

My father has been a cheerleader in my life, supporting all my decisions and trying to help me out in whatever way he could, from joining different committees to try to better my chances of getting into a certain school, to supplying the soap when I volunteered at a car wash. As I get older, I have learned to appreciate his over-protective ways; as my grandmother always said, "he worries about you because he cares." He still sees me as his little five-year-old girl in pigtails, instead of a grown woman making a place for herself in the world. At the same time, I know whenever anything happens, I can always rely on my dad to be there supporting me.

It's hard as I get older and realize that, yes indeed, my father is getting older too. He can't help me move furniture as well as he could in the past, although he will still try. He can't admit he is getting older. When I told him I was engaged I think that was the moment it really hit him that I was indeed grown up, and that while I still rely on my father to be, well, my father, I was old enough to clean up my own scraped knees. I really appreciate my father for being there even through the rough teenage years of rage, when I know I was a little terror, arguing every chance I had, and now through my adulthood, when I turn to my father for advice on things like how long to cook an egg, or how to know if something has gone bad. My father has always been there on the sidelines being my own personal cheerleader, telling me over and over again that I was my own worst critic and that he was proud of me. How far we have come over the last couple years.

I think in some ways my father is one of my best friends, and I only hope that when my sisters get older they can come to appreciate the over-protective father and see that he only wants the best for us, and for us to be happy. So I think I would like to take the whole month of June to just tell every father out there that they are appreciated, for being, well, a Dad.