Low Man

Thing Two is a great shopper and horrible buyer. WD too, except when something has to be purchased as was just the case with T2 needing a dress for an event.

Off we trundled to Loehmann's — is it called that because it is not a place for men or because "High Woman's" doesn't sound couturey? — only for me to discover the need for a course for dads or daughters or both on how to shop together. No tension when we shopped individually. No sale either.

If only we had decided to scale Kilamanjaro together to raise money for a cancer kid, or jointly to trot through the Boston Marathan path or even to start a band then perhaps there would only be smiles in the daddy-daughter future.

But none of those simple challenges will be part of our present or future together time. Like rats in a textile maze, we are doomed to yell across racks and racks of schmattes, a father and daughter bonding in off-price purgatory.

Share the Pain

What ties fathers around the world together — on the good days — are the joys of fatherhood. But, more often we share the pain.

Now it might be for a good cause, as with the seven men's men from Burnley (U.K.) who hot waxed their legs clean for charity. (At least they were smart enough not to go for a Brazilian!). And it might not be their fault, as with the gentlemen featured in "Fatherhood: Six Men, One City," a documentary created at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Social Work department. Or it might just be in fiction, as aptly described by Pulitzer winner Leonard Pitts Jr. in like Mo Johnson, racing against the onset of Alzheimer's to know his son in the new novel "Before I Forget."

Whatever the pain, the key to remember on one's darkest days is that the pain can be lived through; it is and can be shared.

Give It Up

GIVE!

It's what dads do. And not just at certain times of the year.

They donate kidneys to their children (even when it is not a part of their culture). They donate livers to their children — although if they really want to do it anonymously so as not to upset their children later on it is probably a good idea not to pose for a picture accompanying a newspaper article on it.

The father's example is a key to getting kids involved in charity. One example: Marlo Thomas's devotion to the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital began by watching her father return to the dining room table with tears of sorrow or joy in his eyes after getting news of a child's progress at the hospital he founded.

When dads do it well, the impact carries on through generations. Such was the impact of Ted Neal on sisters Linda Cartwright and Carole Eley that they founded The Ted Foundation to aid the people of Kerala, India, who lived world's away from their middle class British lives.

So GIVE in order that your kids can live and so that they can live better lives.

Food Glorious Food

Chemistry is the magic that catalyzes ingredients into food. And food can be the inexplicable that joins father and child.

Certainly that was the case when "Mike on a bike" visited the Colorado soup kitchen and was recognized by his 17-year-old daughter who he hadn't seen for years and was volunteering to bring food to the hungry. As he put it to the Grand Junction Sentinel, "If it wasn’t for the Soup Kitchen, I wouldn’t be here,” he said. "And if it wasn’t for the Soup Kitchen, I wouldn’t have reunited with my family."

It is also food, that ties the Anderson, S.C., Pig Daddy's BBQ team (who are competing in the third annual Piedmont Blues and Hash Bash) to their forefathers. As humble team leader Richard Medford told The Index-Journal, "Our dads used to watch their dads cook, so we built our first cooker 25 years ago, which is what we still use. We’re just doing what we were taught growing up and hoping we do better than last year."

Thanks to the Fortune Society, which helps ex-cons transition into positions of service to society, food strengthens the lives of single dads and their children. Teaching former fourflushers to work in four-star restaurant kitchens builds a life for both dads and offspring.

And even when ingestion isn't the answer to the tie, food can still strangely connect the father and the child, as it does for Formula 1's Kazuki Nakajima and his father Satoru, who also raced on the Grand Prix circuit. Apparently, they both drive like natto, soybeans.

Sacrifice

Whether a dads sacrifice for his kid(s) is big or small is always one of opinion.

How hard is it to give up the opportunity to continuing as Guernsey's deputy treasury minister as is the choice of Jonathan Le Tocq. In standing down, he claimed, "At the moment my three daughters are all in their teenage years and I’m very aware as a States member there is a lot of pressure on them and they have suffered from that."

Is this sacrifice more or less noble — or, does it really make any sense to even try to compare? — than Cy Chambers hot footing it through burning coals to raise money for research into the spina bifida from which his daughter, Ella, suffers? Or, can it be spoken in the same breath as the emotional sacrifice leading to the material one of David Hendry, who will allow his head to be shaved to raise money for Ipswich Hospital in memory of his daughter Amanda, who passed 15 years ago.

Or, should we just accept that dads sacrifice? A given. Some more; some less. All do ... and should.

** Keep eyes on the prize: the kids. **

Porcine Initiation

Charity begins with pork.

That at least is how Millard Fuller biographies describe the growth of Habitat for Humanity. His dad gave him a pig and tutored him how to make money from it. That knowledge led to fabulous business success by the age of 30 and, via a circuitous path, helped him create communities within communities that provide houses for underprivileged and others in need.

Fuller had an acrimonious split with HforH and built up the Fuller Center for Housing, in turn providing a business structure for his four children to live in, as well as their spouses and perhaps even his grandchildren.

** Interesting, a dad giving away the bacon. **