Have a good day fathers and mothers with fathers

He was bone tired, the father. He sat at the campfire, the last one to go to sleep. The children and wife were tucked into their bedrolls and the night, finally, was quiet; just the sound of the fire and the crickets, and the occasional brush of wind as it touched the tops of the pines. Just the man, his sleeping family, and the two dogs that laid at his feet.

He looked up and could see the heart of the Milky Way from the clearing where they made their camp that day. He use to love looking at the stars. When he was a kid, even younger than his own now, he could name most of the constellations by sight. They fascinated him. Then, the fading of the clarity of the city air hid them for years.

He grew up and found other things but it was always at night, here, in the wilderness, where he could look up again. He had passed four decades since those days of his youth and the patterns in heaven and the names that went with him, escaped his memory-most of them-not all.

He stirred the fire with the stick he had picked up during the day and now was the extension of his hand, moving the embers seemingly at random, but there was a purpose, even here. His could see something in the heart of the fire, most men did. Women did too but it was men, fathers, who reflected the deepest. They had paid a high price and found the cost to be so expensive, but the return was beyond measure. Here, in this camp, the man's world now existed. There was nothing beyond the light that was of any value, nothing of any consequence.

It had taken him years to reach that conclusion-years. There were still times the man thought otherwise.

It was late.

The man pulled his coat up around his neck and reached down and stroked each of the two dogs. Then he went back to stirring the fire. In two hours, it would be morning. The world would return and the fire would be out. His family would wake and they would roll up their bedrolls and break camp. The outside would enter again.

He waited, the man, for the first light of the new day. It came, first with just a glow, warming the distant hills with a soft grey color tinted with blue. He knew the rest would come quickly.

There were many choices the man could have made over the course of his life. He even thought some of them could have still caused him to arrive here, at this spot, on this day. Maybe.

But he knew one thing, he was here now. His road had caused him to be here now, for this time, at this moment. He looked again to the heavens and saw them begin to slide behind the curtain, away from his sight. He smiled. Then there was a slight laugh, one of pleasure and fun. But still very light and soft.

The man paused for a moment, staring at the sky. He looked down and poked the fire;the smile still on his face. It was almost time to wake the people. He looked up again.

"Thank you."