Blog / 2016 / Happy Father’s Day

Growing up, my family never celebrated Father’s Day. My Papa said it was a holiday manufactured by greeting card companies, and that we weren’t going to buy into that horse oil. Either every day was Father’s Day, or no day was.

At the time, this take on Daddy’s Day didn’t make a huge impression on me. Like every other quirk of my bizarre little family, it seemed completely normal to reject convention and consumerism in favor of feeling real feelings. Of course, now that I have seen more of the world—now that I have been exposed to different ways of thinking—I recognize the gift that my father gave me.

While I’m certain I get swept up in the prevailing paradigms like everyone else, my Papa did inoculate me as much as he could. Crawling far enough away from the societal soup in order to get some perspective and evolve into something new is close to impossible, but every Father’s Day I remember to keep on trying.