06/21/2026
Father’s Day
There is something about Father’s Day that makes time feel visible.
When I became a father twenty years ago, twenty years sounded like a lifetime. It felt impossibly far away. There would be youth soccer games and school dances, long car rides and golf tournaments, graduations and first apartments, heartbreaks and triumphs. So much life stretched out ahead of us that it seemed endless.
Yet here I am.
Twenty years into fatherhood.
And twenty-five years was all I had with my own father.
They say time moves faster as we age. Intellectually, I know that isn’t true. The clock still ticks at the same pace. A minute remains a minute. A year remains a year.
But it certainly feels different.
When I was ten, a summer seemed endless. Days were measured by sunshine and bicycles and whether the streetlights had come on yet. A year was ten percent of my life. It was enormous.
Now a year passes in what feels like a few deep breaths.
One moment I am teaching Harrison how to swing a golf club. The next, I am watching him prepare for college. One moment Ella is holding my hand as we cross a parking lot. The next, she is building a life of her own, studying, traveling, becoming the woman she is meant to become.
Somewhere in between were thousands of ordinary moments.
Car rides.
Dinners.
Homework.
Vacations.
Conversations that seemed insignificant at the time.
The funny thing about being a father is that the moments that shape a life rarely announce themselves. We expect the big milestones to matter most—the graduations, championships, birthdays, and celebrations. And they do matter.
But looking back, what I miss most are the ordinary Tuesdays.
The nights watching television together.
The quick trip for ice cream.
The random conversation in the kitchen.
The simple act of everyone being home.
Those moments disappear quietly. You don’t realize they are becoming memories until long after they are gone.
Maybe that is why Father’s Day feels different now.
As a son, Father’s Day was about celebrating the man who raised me. Now it is also about remembering him.
Twenty-five years.
That was all the time I had with my dad.
At twenty-five, I thought I had been cheated somehow. I thought there should have been more time. More conversations. More advice. More golf rounds. More stories.
Today, at fifty-two, I’ve now lived longer without him than I lived with him.
That is a strange realization.
Yet I still find him showing up in unexpected places.
In the way I speak to patients.
In the way I coach my children.
In the values I carry.
In the moments when I hear a phrase come out of my mouth and realize it was his phrase all along.
Maybe that is how fathers remain with us.
Not in grand monuments, but in small pieces of ourselves that we carry forward.
And perhaps that is the real gift of being a parent.
We don’t get to stop time.
We don’t get to keep our children young.
We don’t get to hold on to every moment.
What we get is the opportunity to leave something behind.
A lesson.
A value.
A memory.
A sense of being loved.
Something that lives on long after we are gone.
As I reflect on Father’s Day this year, I feel gratitude more than anything else.
Gratitude for twenty years of being called Dad.
Gratitude for twenty-five years of being someone’s son.
Gratitude for every soccer game, golf tournament, school event, beach walk, family dinner, and quiet conversation.
The years have gone by quickly.
Far too quickly.
But perhaps that is the point.
Life was never meant to be measured by how much time we have. It is measured by how fully we inhabit the time we are given. It is measured by the moments we create with the people we love.
And when I look back on the years with my father, and the years with my children, I realize something important.
The moments that mattered most were rarely extraordinary.
They were simply shared.
A father and son.
A father and daughter.
Time together.
The clock never slowed down.
But for a few moments along the way, it felt like it did.
And maybe those moments are what make a life.
