Fathers’ Day Gifts Your Melancholy Dad Actually Wants (But Won’t… Can’t Admit)
Published in
2 min readJun 16, 2020
Your pensive patriarch doesn’t want another necktie.
Father’s Day is all about celebrating your dear old dad for the man he is. But while there’s a sea of gift guides suggesting whiskey stones, Leatherman multitools, and meat-of-the-month subscriptions, these generalized lists don’t take into account the pops out there who don’t fit that rugged, beer-swigging, sports-loving stereotype. Here’s a curated list of things your moody, melancholy father actually wants, but could never bring himself to tell you.
- A satchel of smoothed agates, what for turning over in one’s hand while thinking.
- Biscuits, fresh but cold.
- A carefree day of cloud counting, like those childhood summers at Shrutter’s Pond.
- A collection of broken dolls, each with an unlikely backstory.
- Shoes like they used to make.
- A crown fashioned from twigs like Johnnie Beattie once made in the fort on the island in Shrutter’s Pond, but Aunt Hattie threw away on the grounds of “frivolity.”
- A music box that can’t be repaired.
- A tattered journal filled with wistful thoughts.
- A berry-picking basket — not any basket, but the berry-picking kind with a finely woven bowl and a tall, swooped handle, light blue in color, like the one Peepaw put the dead field mouse in that we found on our last visit to Shrutter’s Pond before the incident.
- Pillowcases that wick away tears.
- A childhood friend who isn’t passed and hasn’t changed.
- A canoe trip to Shrutter’s Pond Island to visit young Johnnie Beattie’s graveside.
- Peepaw’s handwritten recipe for field mouse pie, framed.
- Time.