Hi now to all our dads in Oz

It’s Father’s day on Sunday — first Sunday of September, start of spring.

Seems there’s a dearth of dads here, some families suggesting Father’s day best be celebrated in Australia, to which country many dads decamp escaping the ties and costs involved in sustaining parenthood.

So sad that, not only for the children left fatherless but for the dads themselves who find on their eventual return to New Zealand that deferred maintenance can hit guys when they are collecting their national superannuation, at the end of a working life.

Just as well the state helps mothers fill the financial shortfall.

Children cannot wait for food, sandals and school uniforms.

But Father’s Day is for the good dads who stick around through thick and thin, help their children through the traumas of growing up, the disappointments that come, dads who share in the good and the bad and show their children how to cope with what comes and how to make every day better for themselves and those around them.

It is dads who nudge children into making breakfast and little presents for Mother’s Day, dads who are sometimes forgotten when their turn should come.

You look back on childhood and it is what you did on Mother’s Day, mostly prompted and financed and helped by dad, that you remember.

But every Father’s Day calls for something special, a block of chocolate, a cake, kindling cut, a book, DVD or socks.

We need to make our dads feel a bit special — that you remember.

I remember one day when our dad had a broken foot and most of it in plaster but his toes not.

He nodded off over a book and we painted those toe nails, all five, with bright red paint and when he woke up we surprised him with our Happy Father’s Day card as well.

He did look so surprised and then laughed.

I remember that and think our mother must have helped us find the paint and the moment because she was laughing too and kissed dad, saying happy Father’s Day.

But now I wonder, did we have Father’s Days back then or was it just our dad’s birthday?

Same difference: a special day for Dad.

It was a lovely memory: still is.