My Dad’s Father’s Day cards are still on my dining room table, about 500 miles from where he lives. Sad, ain’t it? But it’s typical me. For some reason I am unable to mail anything on time.

Every birthday and Hallmark holiday I simply cannot get the cards into the mailbox. I’m great at buying them, but that’s where my greatness ends.

This year it’s going to be different, I told myself weeks ago. I purchased the cards well before Father’s Day, thinking having them in my possession early would increase their chances of making it into my Dad’s big strong hands. Alas, no.

It’s a shame really because my Dad’s pretty cool. Well, he can actually be kind of a dork, but isn’t that part of being a dad? He’s like a big teddy bear, with a James Earl Jones-type voice and bratty sense of humor. I get my sense of humor from him, but that’s not all he gave me.

I have only one sibling, a sister who is eight years older than me. I remember as a young girl I used to grill my Dad on whether he wished he had a son, and not believing him when he said he was fine with having only daughters. I decided to be Dad’s son and do “boy things” with him.

After a few arrowhead-hunting trips, fishing excursions and hikes in various brush, I realized I actually liked these “boy things,” so I started doing more, including shooting things. Guns, a bow and arrow and my favorite, a crossbow. Yep, me and Van Helsing have something in common.

During these little trips Dad and I would talk about anything and nothing. He taught me how to find out which way was North, South, East, West. He tried to teach me how to tell time by the sun, but that failed miserably. (Now’s probably a good time to tell you that my dad grew up on a farm in Kansas.)

Now that I’m grown, I miss that time we spent together, but we still talk each week about anything and nothing.