Yes, I know I’m a bit late to be offering those wishes. And actually, I’m also late to be recognizing Father’s Day, which was observed last Sunday.

But when you think about it, you really have to have mothers and Mother’s Day in order to have fathers and Father’s Day (all those test tubes and petri dishes aside), so they are inexorably connected.

And I have to ask the question: Am I late recognizing Mother’s and Father’s Day, or am I recognizing one of the last and possibly the late Mother’s and Father’s Days?

If my parents told me once, they told me at least one hundred times, “Don’t talk to anyone about their religious or political beliefs.” They meant, of course, that those topics are likely to generate tension and angry conflict. As such, they were not the stuff of polite social conversation. Notwithstanding the fact that I find religion and politics to be the two most interesting of all conversational topics, a third caution should be added to the list: parenting. In other words, don’t talk to anyone about how they are raising their children.

I had a visit from a couple of guys from Iowa last week and they were both wearing a pair of bib overalls. You could say they kind of “stood out from the crowd.” 

I remembered writing an “Ode To The Bib Overall” many years ago, and in honor of these two farm boys and others, I’m submitting one of my “Classic” Last Windrows I wrote years ago.

“Ode To The Bib Overall”

When I was but just a little child,

Thinking of them and those days makes me grin.

Straps around my bare shoulder blades,

When our children were young they would often ask to play hide and seek. I would counter with an offer to play hide and don’t find. Their response: “Dad, that’s no fun!”

Every child (and every adult) longs to be valued and sought out.

This coming Sunday is celebrated as Father’s Day - a day set aside to honor those men who give of themselves to raise up the next generation.