I don’t have much time for traditional days of celebration.

Family Day, Victoria Day or Independence Day, depending. Even Christmas Day is a day to sleep in for someone who has questions around its origins. Easter isn’t a day so much as an affront to those who believe that sugar and fat are as much of a threat to a healthy lifestyle as Stephen Harper and Mitt Romney.

But in the wake of May Day, Father’s Day is upon us and for whatever strange reason I feel that this one I have to acknowledge, even though the Old Man is long gone.

It suddenly struck me what the perfect Father’s Day gift would be.

My father.

Just for the day and with all of his failings and blind optimism intact. We haven’t talked for a long time, and we would. About airplanes, about race cars and compromise. About people he knew and about how bad stuff almost always turns around in an interesting way. I would remind him that I am better at some things than he was and he would have the grace not to remind me that he will always be better at the things that matter.

I would buy him a beer and it would be the only one he drank all year.

We would disagree on several topics, but he would find my point of view interesting and endearing. He wouldn’t talk about the War.

Yeah, spending Father’s Day with my father would be cool.

Father’s Week, I’m not so sure.