Unpostable Father's Day equals the reality of children

I don’t have a Olan Mills-type Hallmark appropriate photo to share from the Father’s Day festivities 2016.

I attempted to take several pictures but they aren’t “postable” quality. Me and my Dad’s initial plans went something like this, “I’ll be out on the island so catch the ferry to Put-In-Bay. I’ll meet you for Mass at the Mother of Sorrows Catholic Church, we’ll have lunch then I have to return to another island and you can go to your sisters for a late lunch at three with everyone else.”

That suggestion soon changed and I was able to book a ferry ride with my car to the mainland and appear at my Dad’s sisters by six o’clock.

The day felt more like “spoil our cousin living on an island this summer” versus Father’s Day with the spread of food and delightful family atmosphere bonded by decades of sleepovers, celebrations, camp outs, hardships, babies, weddings, graduations, and endless parties from the Florida Keys to Marblehead.

Two people were missing from this summer Sunday Soiree nestled in the suburbs of Cleveland where the entire region awaited the eight o’clock hour to strike and for LeBron to take center stage in those Nikey high tops highlighted with a gold foil swoosh.

My older brother and his wife Kate. They stayed on the islands of the Florida Keys to work on a flooring project and shipped their two babies via Delta to Coastal Ohio for summer fun in tolerable sunshine.

Those babies are my two nephews, Joshua and Joseph.

They know me affectionately as their “Daddy’s baby sister.” The youngest, age three-and-a-half refused to acknowledge he is my baby nephew, but let me scoop him up in my arms anyway. The second, my brother and sister-in-law’s biological birth child didn’t let me touch him. No hugs were given. I was barely acknowledged.

This was, and has always been his MO, and I was familiar with his boundaries. He knows I was there in the hospital the day he was born, on a remote tropical island fifteen-hundred miles away from family with just enough civilization to keep one sane and entertained. On this day, he watched intently as the little girls in the family ran up to me to be held and kissed, basking in the glory of abundant love.

Sooner than usual, the boundaries relaxed a little. I reminded myself they had traveled across the country and then, across the state for this Father’s Day 2016.

Josh played outside with his cousins and accumulated enough dirt on his gigantic bare feet and under his toenails to serve as a reminder we had a Tom Sawyer-type soul on our hands. A boy accustomed to exploring, travel, and adventure.

In the blink of an eye and one dessert plate later, tears were in his eyes, blood ran from his fingers and he stood wailing with a black Raskullz helmet on his head. He had smashed his fingers in the garage trying to extract a scooter and tore the skin from his growing fingers fashioned in the exact same shape as his mother’s. A DNA wonder I noticed as soon as he was wheeled into a room for me and my brother to see. I ran to him to scoop him up and couldn’t lift him. I recalled the times my older brother would yell at me, “Josie, you need to go work. Go collect!” he was ready to strangle me.

Then would question me, “Are you going to work today?”

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I no longer had interest in making money. The appeal of anchoring the evening news had lost all of its luster once the life of my little nephew was confirmed.

I knew the time would come where I couldn’t scoop him up. He’d be too big.

So, I walked him into the bathroom. Rinsed his fingers. He screamed and shaked his hands, the helmet remained on his head adding to the intense drama including blood that had splattered all over his khaki shorts. We were joined by my Dad’s sister’s little girl, and her older brother’s littlest girl. There in the bathroom I sat on the toilet and pulled Joshua onto my lap. My cousin comforted him and doctored the wound with two neon green Band-aids. We wiped the tears.

The moments are nothing resembling an Olan Mills quality. They’re real.

On this Father’s Day 2016 I can say that my brother is a dream many wed and unwed women yearn for. I watch him be a role model for all of the other males on a tiny island somewhere between Miami and Key West. I watch him go without so his wife and children can have everything. I listen to him reason and sway unreasonable children. I’ve heard him get up in the middle of the night, again and again and again to comfort his crying boys. He knows how to shower, diaper, dress, potty-train, educate and love them. He is always home for dinner and there’s always a three-course meal on the table. One of the boys is adopted. He too was clearly formed in the womb to be part of our family.

My older brother’s employees adore him, the community rallies around him and he always makes sure everyone gets paid.

“Everyone always gets a paycheck,” seven-year old Joshua Koler triumphantly relayed to me. “There isn’t anything more my Daddy loves to do than give everyone a paycheck.”

Thanks Jason. For giving men everywhere a business manager, father, husband and brother to look up to. Happy Father’s Day to you. We love you, Kate and the baby nephews.