Summer Sunday: Happy Hour with Daddy

20 Jun Summer Sunday: Happy Hour with Daddy

He walks in the door, exhausted. He’s been working for more than nine hours on the construction site, lifting heavy things, and he’s covered in a layer of fine wood dust. He slumps into a chair and bends over slowly to unlace his work boots.

“Daddy! Daddy! Try and get me,” says the four-year-old, touching his knee and grinning as he runs away. His father’s eyes twinkle, and he rises slowly from the chair, plodding with giant steps that make the floor tremble, heightening the excitement of the game. He spreads his arms wide and the four-year-old squeals.

“Lift me up!” yells the six-year-old, who is tall for her age and almost too heavy to lift. “Me, too!” adds the four-year-old. Daddy obliges. His arms still ache from work, but he is never too tired to lift them up, swing them around, or toss them onto the bed. Every night, the ritual is the same. This is Happy Hour at our house. Daddy comes home from work, and immediately both kids crawl all over him, wanting the rough, wrestling playtime that they don’t get from Mommy all day.

We call it the “Division of Labor,” this parenting regime of ours. Mommy does the cooking, the dishes, the packing of lunches, the dressing and bathing of kids. Daddy does Happy Hour. There are no martinis, although sometimes he cracks a beer for the festivities. But somehow the ritual accomplishes the same thing—a slow unwinding after a day that was too long, too serious, too hard. For an hour, Daddy’s worries dissolve, and he is transported into the carefree world that children inhabit—or should inhabit—all the time.

This is Daddy at his best. He is not paying bills, or emptying the garbage, or fixing something at the house. He is not grumbling over chores, or cajoling the kids into doing anything. This is what he was made to do—it’s what he’s good at, and it’s the thing I appreciate most about him, not just on Father’s Day but every day. My husband does the heavy lifting in every sense of the word, but it’s this particular type of lifting and playing with the kids that makes our family the most buoyant and joyful. When I’m old and looking back on these years, I won’t remember the bill paying or the house fixing or the garbage duty. What I’ll remember is Happy Hour, and the way he was never too tired or too self-involved to lift up our whole family with his strength and love.