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Hey Dad,

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!!! We had some heavy wet snow dump on us, knocking out the power for 12 hours last night. The kids think it's wonderful and have been outside making snowballs, snowmen, and sliding off the shed roof (until I saw them). Tonight, we're thinking about going to Long John Silver's since we weren't able to do that on the first snow night. It's tradition.

It's funny how some of the best traditions start. You don't go looking for them … they kind of find you. Take for example the LJS tradition. Several years ago we were on our way somewhere when it started snowing and it was dark, not the powdery, dusty kind of snow but the big, goose-down kind of snow.

I guess it was dinnertime and we pulled into a LJS. I can still remember walking from the van to the front door as the snow filled the sky in softness. It was magical. Ever since then, when we get those big kind of snowflakes that stick, the kids, who normally hate LJS, beg us to eat at Long John Silver's. So tonight we're going … probably.

Those traditions are powerful tools in the fathering toolbox. They somehow tie the tradition or memory to a person and what's important. I know that when I'm long gone that and my sixty-year-old children find themselves surrounded by millions of feathery snowflakes they'll not only get this insatiable desire to eat at LJS, but they'll remember their dad who made a big deal about everything, risked life and limb to drive to LJS in blizzard-like conditions, loved to snuggle around the fire and watch old movies, and got tears in his eyes when he thought about his kids growing up.

All that from a silly tradition that I didn't even try to create … it just happened. The important thing, Dad, is to be there when it happens. It saddens me to think that so many dads are too busy doing their 'thing' that they miss out on traditions, and when their kids are sixty and surrounded by a million feathery snowflakes, they won't have him to remember.

So make sure you're there, Dad, and let the traditions find you.

You 'da dad,

© 2011 Todd Wilson. Used by permission

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