A FATHER’S GIFT OF LOVE

On Father’s Day, I am always reminded of what my dad has given me.

Dad's grin was hard to miss when he came through the door after work. He held a shopping bag in his hand and proudly plopped it on the kitchen table in front of me.

“What’s this?” I asked, surprised. It wasn’t quite my 14th birthday, and Christmas had long since passed. 

Turquoise eyes shined as he motioned for me to open it. “For you!” He said.

I peered into the plastic and pulled out a pair of shiny flaming red shorts. 

“Oh?” I said.

“Mom heard you say all the girls wore satin shorts,” he explained.

Hearing her name, Mom appeared and her smile left as soon as she saw the shorts. Our eyes met in the silent girl code we used when Dad had misread a clear message. She shrugged.

Three pairs of eyes turned back toward the shorts now held high in my hands. The fabric shimmered in the light, casting a cherry glow on my cheeks. 

There was no denying they were satin. So we’d have to give him that.

I held them to my body. The wide elastic waistband reached up to my ribs. From there, yards of ruby red billowed out and extended past my knobby knees. Two white racing stripes ran down the middle of the outside of each leg as if to part the red fabric sea.

My mind went back to gym class that day. Julie and Cindy, the popular girls, had pranced up and down the basketball court in matching baby blue satin short shorts that barely covered their rear ends when they moved.

“I didn’t see anything in the girls' section, so a clerk found these in the boys,” Dad said.

Mom moved into whispering distance of my dad, shielding her shock from me with a tiny manicured hand, “Warren? Those are boxing trunk-“

“-Thanks, Dad!” I jumped up with a hug to defend my dad’s honor with a resolute smile.

After all, his love for me far outweighed his fashion sense. 

The next day, I dutifully carried the oversized red shorts to school in my gym bag and put them on for the entire 45-minute class for the whole world to see. 

When I stepped off the bus, I immediately tucked Dad’s gift into the back of my bottom drawer and never wore them again.

After that, Mom did the shopping. So when my birthday arrived, I unwrapped the long-awaited pair of baby blue short shorts with a matching satin jacket. 

For the rest of the year, I blended in with the shiny baby blue crowd in the hallways who now accepted me because I looked just like them.

But I’d often return home, open the drawer and reach far back to run my hand over the familiar softness of those red shorts to remember who I was.

And they always told me I was the daughter of a good man who clothed me with his overflowing love.

Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.

James 1:17 (NIV)