This coming Sunday is the day we celebrate Fathers. As I said in the Mother’s Day column, there are all kinds of mothers, well the same is true for Fathers. Fathers carry a lot of weight, literally sometimes. Most of them go to work daily, bringing home the bacon as the saying goes.

Their job as a father, includes, but is not limited to, making the hard decisions that arrive at his doorstep when the mother says “go ask your father.” Either way he answers, he can get in trouble, so he runs. Not really. His decision is final unless overruled by the mother or the asker.

Fathers are the drivers when we go on vacation. He is the one who has his seat kicked 40,000 times an hour by the swinging little feet in the backseat. The minivan was probably invented by a father who thought “if we could put in a third seat we can put the kickers back there,” good thinking Pops.

Fathers have to walk down a lot of roads, but the longest one is probably the aisle of the church where, at the end, he gives his daughter away in marriage. As he kisses her on the cheek and backs away, he looks at her and remembers another time he held her hand in his and helped her learn to walk a few steps. It seems like only yesterday. Fathers are the ones who hold us up in times of troubles, seem to find a handkerchief or tissue when we cry, rarely cry themselves, if ever.

Once they were boys who played with toy soldiers in the dirt and now they are soldiers in the dirt of Iraq and Afghanistan. Once they were boys riding bikes, playing baseball, now they are teaching their child to ride a bike or holding little hands around the bat to teach them how to swing it.

Once they imagined themselves as wrestlers, cops, firemen, pilots and now they are, well, whatever they became. Happy Father’s Day to all fathers, enjoy the baseball game or golf match through closed eyelids while still carrying on a conversation, a talent Fathers seem to possess.