A Father’s Day riff

Juju and me, Provincetown, MA

Happy Father’s Day, 2025, to those who’ve had the great fortune to be one. I am so lucky. Sam and Juju changed my life and turned me inside out, less self seeking, more a grown-ass man. Our high-tonic girl wasn’t a hugger back then.

More to add: being captured by fatherhood, and this happens to dads AND moms, is an arrangement that many, at times, cannot stand, you can feel stuck in a stall, women can feel strapped literally to a breast pump at all hours, and we have wanted to jump out of our skins at some point, or many points, to leave our bodies, but there are no highway exits.

But there are, Wow! Hello! perks, if you make it as far as I have, a stepdad for 31 years, biological dad for 25 years, that can come with the territory.

I was blessed to have this wonderful, doggedly persistent wife, Karen, and on this dank, low-clouds, June Sunday, for some damn reason, as she rattled off the chores for the day, the weeding and trimming, and I accidentally yanked out a ceiling light fixture string, so that’s broke and needs fixing, she said .. “she says to me she says” (as my great aunties would put it):

“I forgot! you don’t have to do anything. Today’s your day. You get to have breakfast out, come home, lie down if you want, write, do whatever you want.”

I was knocked out. ❤️ There is nothing else to say. After almost 30 years, I’ve made it, man.

Guys, you need to find yourselves a really lovely woman who just wants you to be good, competent, dependable, protect her (I think, I don’t know), and support her. Wow. It’s like winning $250 bucks in scratch-off tickets.

And then if you’ve done all that, or most of that, she might give you the day off. (I cannot prescribe the proper delegation of marriage duties. This is a chemical balance no one has yet deciphered, but it’s powerful and shaky!)

It’s an incredibly good deal, this little series of contracts we’ve made. We don’t even know how we made them, but we were in love, and now we’re diligent and persistent. And we love our little dungeon. Bring on the chains!

I heartily recommend Father’s Day.