Happy Father's Day

Today at lunch I saw a family with an adult daughter who was disabled. Judging by the chair she was in, the oxygen tank it held, the stuffed animal in her arms and the way she looked around the room, I imagine she was mentally as well as physically challenged.

I don't know if her condition was the result of an accident or something else. The summer I worked at a nursing home, I saw several people who were chronologically adults but who had the minds of infants. They even slept in adult-sized cribs because they would roll out of regular beds if placed in them.

Her father sat next to her. He was big and wore an imposing walrus mustache that added to the look. He carried himself with the attitude of a guy who had spent a considerable part of his high school life knocking down quarterbacks, and from where I could sit even I could tell he worked with his hands by the scrapes and calluses. The two or three times I heard him say something to the other family members with him, his voice was deep and matched the rest of his gruff appearance.

And he was the one who reached out with a napkin and wiped the corner of his daughter's mouth when she had drooled instead of swallowed. When she was born, did he know that at a time when his friends would be watching their own daughters learn to work accelerator, brake and wheel, he would still be doing for his own what he did when she was an infant? I don't know. All I know is that he gave his child the help she needed as it was within his power to give.

Happy Father's Day, sir. The joy of many more to you.