Australian idle

I am informed by Wikipedia, which may or may not be an authoritative source of information, that most countries that celebrate Father's Day do so on the third Sunday in June. However, Australia celebrates it on the first Sunday in September, alongside Fiji, New Zealand, and Papua New Guinea.

If you have a father, and intend to buy him a Father's Day gift, Bunnings, Australia's largest hardware chain, may be your first port of call. He may gratefully receive the gift of a set of tools or gardening equipment. Either that, or he might be offended, taking such a gift as a subtle way of telling him that he is lazy, and you want him to do more work around the house.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father%27s_Day

Breaking the cycle

Today is Father's Day in Australia. As I was driving home from church, I was listening to Harry Chapin's 1974 hit, Cat's in the Cradle. The song tells the story of a father who is always too busy with work to spend time with his son. Years later when his son has grown up and moved away, he regrets that he never spent time with him, and now it's too late. His son has a family of his own, and is too busy to see his father.

The song profoundly observes that sons of absent fathers often turn out to be absent fathers to their own children. Things can be changed if they take deliberate action to break the cycle.

Fathers matter. Fathers and mothers aren't interchangeable. Each plays a complimentary, and equally important role in raising children. Whether by circumstances of life, or deliberate actions by adults, I feel for any son who has to grow up or transition to adulthood without a father.

http://www.harrychapin.com/circle/winter04/behind.htm