Last year for Canadian Thanksgiving, Samantha and I drove from Vancouver to Salmon Arm, BC, to spend the weekend with her extended family there.   Within minutes of arriving, her uncle Michael was shopping around his plan to go on a hike.  At seven months pregnant, Samantha didn’t think she could comfortably climb the hill away from the Shuswap Lake.  Michael assured me that we’d ascend a few hundred feet and get great views of Mt. Ida:

It was a beautiful day, crisp and cool and sunny.  As we set out, it was just the two of us and a couple of dogs.

At 62-years-old, having only had me stay at his house once before that, Micheal didn’t really know me. We’d previously spent perhaps 20 hours together in the same place.  We chatted a bit, but largely followed the dogs.  I let Sooty off of his leash, and he ran back and forth from one spot of underbrush to another, sniffing so loudly that he sounded like a little steam engine:

So we were walking along, and I got a bit quiet, and he asked me how my previous few months had been. I said,

Well, you know, my father passed away a bit suddenly in August, and everything just seems… different… since then.

Michael was visibly moved.  He put his arm around my shoulders, and thought about what I’d said for a little while, and then said something that I recall perfectly:

I’m really sorry.  You know, time carries on, and you’ve been a man long enough to wonder what that means.  To be a man.  I think you’re finally finding out.  No man truly knows until he loses his own father.  And you’re going to be the dad now.

I nodded, and Michael then said,

We never really lose anyone, you know.

I know.  I’m reminded of that every day, since we named the baby Will.  Every time I say his name, I think of my father:

But I’ve not really thought about my own father in relation to Father’s Day.  Or – I’ve thought about him, but I didn’t realize I was doing so.  I’ve thought about this, my first Father’s Day as an actual father myself, as a milestone whereby I mark what it is I’m accomplishing for my child.  My own dad still has an impact in all of that, but it’s not easy to perceive.  He wasn’t one to celebrate individuals much.  I don’t remember a Father’s Day as ever being much more than a requirement to call him, send him a card and a gift, and maybe visit for the weekend if I could.  If I did visit, he would only have one goal – to go out to eat.  That is it.  A meal at some place where he could get oysters on the half shell and a bit of fresh ceviche.

I find myself 3000 miles from my beautiful wife and son on this, my first Father’s Day, thinking about what Wilton Travis Jordan would make of this place.  I’m in one of the most beautiful places in the world, but I don’t think he would have been as interested in it as I am.  I really want to stay here, and work here, and bring my little family here – for good.  I imagine he would have just told me to hurry up and meet those goals.

And he would have said that he’d like to see me some time.