Father’s Day Bonding and its Minor Victories

By Oscar Barajas

Father’s Day has been given the importance of just another Sunday. Father’s Day is on the weird gauge below Labor Day and just above Flag Day and Arbor Day. What is even worse is that the more time passes the more the holiday erodes. June used to be “Father’s Month.” Now it’s living in a stinky loft with graduates, known as “Dads and Grads.” That’s messed up, because May is not known for “Moms and Proms.”

Secondly, no one ever saves up for a great or even good Father’s Day gift. The urban myth is that the engagement ring should cost about two months’ salary; then by the same token we should give our fathers at least a gift that’s worth two and a half weeks’ worth of allowance.  Those gifts are embarrassing. Fathers always get the short end of the stick. Face it, if you woke up Christmas morning to a three-pack of Hanes’ socks, from the people you loved the most, you’d probably just go back to bed. Most fathers grab their ties and socks, and fight the silent battle with dignity.

I am just as guilty.

I never gave Father’s Day the same energy that I reserved for Mother’s Day. Elementary school raised me that way. Mother’s Day projects were the stress reliever that inspired the creativity that would ordinarily be crushed by state testing. Father’s Day projects were usually done in order to usher in the summer. A lot of times teachers wanted to stay away from Father’s Day altogether, due to the fact that some of my classmates did not have fathers. They would downplay the projects as ideal gifts for grandfathers, uncles and mom’s special friend.

My father would appreciate the cards and ashtrays for a finely tuned moment, before they found their way into the trash. He was not one for decorative gifts and knickknacks. Most of the time, my father would go through the motions of Father’s Day to appease my mom who felt that he needed to bond more with his children. They would negotiate that particular Sunday to the last minute. In exchange for skipping out on church, my father would treat us to a meal. This usually meant Sizzler’s salad bar – but not the steak, which my father considered a sin, since chicken wings were already part of the salad bar, meat was considered a luxury. He saw adding steak to the meal like adding pyramids to the Statue of Liberty.

My father’s usual gift was a bottle of Old Spice towards which my sister and I would contribute. He would go nuts if we got him anything else. My father had weird theories that I would adopt as my own. For some reason he had a deep rooted loathing for Brut, which he associated with domestic violence. Apparently Old Spice was made out of chivalry and courage. My mother would always provide a shirt with my sister’s name along with my own.

At the end of the day, my father would slump his shoulders and sigh a sigh that got deeper and deeper every year. I knew that it was not disappointment but rather a feeling of anticipation. After all, every Mother’s Day my mother went to bed knowing that she would get to do whatever she wanted, while my father was destined to spend another Sunday coming up with new ways to ditch a new round of homemade greeting cards and homemade ceramics. Let’s face it; Mother’s Day is the Old Spice of holidays, while Father’s Day remains as Brut.