My Father’s Day

A favorite picture of my dad and sister, somewhere on Lake Ontario circa 1974

As you might expect, I was going to share a jewelry picture in this post, but my dad’s amazing dimples got the best of me in this snapshot, so I decided to include it instead.

But as for the jewelry in question, there’s this quasi-tacky button sort of pin that my dad gave me a few years before he died that I’ve held onto like the Hope diamond. So I tried to take a few pictures of it to share here on Father’s Day along with some memories, but the truth is it’s something I’ve never worn (probably because it is plastic and in the shape of a little house painted metallic blue with silver hearts on the doors and windows) and the pictures were just sort of crap.

Of course, this is not to say that he had poor taste in jewelry. I have many vivid memories of standing beside him at the counter of Murray’s Jewelry Shop as he looked at what seemed like thousands of beautiful options before selecting yet another perfect gift for my mother. But in this particular case, the way the pin looks truly doesn’t matter.

This little house-shaped bauble was probably picked it up on a lark at a Habitat for Humanity fundraiser, an organization that my dad was very involved with in his later years. He didn’t buy it for me because he thought I loved blue plastic houses or lapel pins. He bought it because he wanted to support a mission that could change people’s lives. And (I’d like to think) he probably thought it would look better on me than him.

So why have I held onto it all these years? Because it reminds of one of the best lessons he ever taught me … you have to look beyond the first impression to see what really matters.

Happy Father’s Day, Sam.