Daddy's Day

I will admit it. I am waaaaaay too cynical to get very excited about Mother's Day or Father's Day either one.

Once a child gets old enough to not be excited themselves to make a card or a git for Mommy or Daddy the whole thing just starts to feel forced. With that as my attitude, you can guess how excited our adult kids typically get at the prospect of celebrating these "arbitrary family appreciation" type holidays.

There are other contributing factors to our laid back attitudes.

We've already held a conversation I think occurs in many empty nest homes sooner or later. It occurs a few days prior to either Mother's Day or Father's Day with no children geographically or temporally available for celebrating and husband says to wife (or vice versa) "Honey, what do you want to do for Father's/Mother's Day?" and the sincere answer may be "Um nothing really. Why are you asking? You're not my Mother/Father?".

We are all of us in the same city this month, but both males have careers where holidays are just as often work days. Which happens to be the case for both this year. That leaves the idea of getting overly focused on a particular "date" a formula for additional frustration.

So we try to ease the idea of anything being too formal, too tied to the calendar, and hopefully we can all appreciate those spontaneous moments of family warmth when we get them.

Like last night. LawSchoolGirl prepared scallops for our dinner.In a family where Mom is obsessed with food and brother is a working Chef, it is not often or realistic you will find anybody else willing to take on meal provision that doesn't involve driving everybody to a restaurant or making a run through a take out window.

Last night however, LSG put together her version of Spiced Seared Scallops au jus with a Citrus Reduction Sauce. It was all kinds of wonderful. She hit the interweb looking at recipes to get general guidelines for proportions using ingredients I already had on hand, but past that launching point this delicious entreé was all hers.

Unfortunately ChefSon was working, so he couldn't be here to share the love or the delectable scallops.I know he would be proud of his little sister for her intelligent take on this classic technique as well as her plating. Not to mention her willingness to cook in somebody else's kitchen to prepare a meal for one of the other pickiest eaters in the universe (who I will not name but hint: he isn't me).

And even though the Hub had to haul in to the hospital to care for a toddler with a health care crisis before the plates were stacked in the sink afterwards, I know he was tickled eight shades of Daddy Proud to have been served up such a great dinner by his daughter.

The home cooked dinner was last night, there will be a couple of gifts today and hopefully a shared restaurant experience with all hands on deck in the days to come. We may not be gathering in organized classic calendrical configuration but we pretty much have the holiday surrounded. It will surrender to our efforts if it knows what is good for it.

I hope that however, whenever and with whoever you celebrate, yours will be a Happy Father's Day!