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and today is a day where the dads who-are-good dads and the dads who are good-enough-i-guess dads and the dads who are around-at-least dads and the dads who are i’d-rather-he-was-dead dads will all bump elbows and get mugs that say “#1 dad” on them and we will tell them all they are good, good dads. we will talk about good, good dads and how good, good our dads are, even though we know they might not be, but at least anywhere he hurt you isn’t a place that really scars. and the good dads deserve it. they deserve a day to say; okay, i wasn’t perfect, sometimes i messed up, but i was a good dad. but they all think they are good dads and in all probability they will die thinking they were good dads, against the evidence, against the nights some of us will be nursing a vodka and saying i mean but if he never seriously hit us. and the mediocre dads won’t know they’re mediocre because they’re at least better than the bad dads, and the bad dads won’t know they’re bad because they’re at least better than absent dads, and the justifications we will find for our fathers and our fathers will find for themselves will loop back around and we’ll say. all things considered, he was my father, and i might cry every time a father is nice on tv, but he was just a person, wasn’t he?

and tomorrow he’ll go back to not really talking during dinner and we’ll go back to calling anybody else before we call him and it will feel less forced in the family again. but today is father’s day. we hand him a fishing kit.

Bringing with it the scent of pollen and grass,

Wildflowers and salty seas,

And they bring me memories of you.

The scent of your hair in the wind,

Wildflowers behind your ear,

Running along the waterfront,

Sand and laughter flying in the air,

All with you.

You might think that I hate Summer now,

That it reminds me of you and us,

And what we had and all we were.

But really, I still love Summer.

Because I understand that your faults,

Your mistakes and even your successes,

Don’t hold any sway over my life anymore.

I understand that,

Even though the thought of you,

Still brings bitterness,

Still brings anger,

Confusion, sometimes tears,

That Summer is still beautiful.

With or without you.

And gradually,

My memories of you fade away into nothing,

Only to be replaced by beautiful new ones.

With or without you,

With or without you,

I’ll make my own way through this life,

With or without you.

Me literally 2 seconds later: