Père Pressure

Father's Day has been a bit of a challenge this year. For starters, we celebrated it last Sunday. We didn't mean to; it was just in the kerfuffle of younger daughter's birthday party, I got convinced that June 14th was Father's Day and no one told me different until Thursday, when elder daughter heard something on the TV while studying and checked her calendar. The pity of it was that I was totally bagged last Sunday and while struggling to finish the tie-dyed tee-shirts from the party and distribute them, failed to do much more than give him a card.

Then there's the matter of dealing with the fallout of my own father's death in January and the tragic travesty (to coin an oxymoron) of his memorial service in April. I spent what seemed a large chunk of May composing a letter to my paternal aunt in response to her kindly-meant but rather pious and platitudinous card and follow-up letter. I've had no response to that, but I focused entirely on my good memories, and where he succeeded as a father.

And how do you succeed as a father? A home-spun kind of answer comes in this song by R. Binn and J. Moore (I don't seem to be able to find out more about them) as interpreted by the late great Chet Atkins. Whatever you may think of country music (and it seems to be chic to declare disdain for it), this is quite a performance by a great artist, as he finds the voice of the little boy that dwells within most men: "He always took care of me. He always had time for me." You can catch a glimpse of several famous people during this video, including Vince Gill and Mark Knopfler.


I'll dedicate this to my father's better nature, and to the Resident Fan Boy himself, who, for the record, succeeds as a father and as a human being.