Fathers’ Day Gifts Your Melancholy Dad Actually Wants (But Won’t… Can’t Admit)

Your pensive patriarch doesn’t want another necktie.

“Dad” rhymes with “sad.” (via Pixabay)

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.