This issue of Chicago Catholic comes to you a week after Father’s Day. It seems appropriate, then, to honor my husband and other fathers now, because that’s how Father’s Day celebrations often feel: a day (or a week) late, and a dollar short. Maybe it’s because kids aren’t generally in school in late June, so fathers don’t get the hand-painted flower pots or candleholders made of baby food jars with tissue paper glued on. Commercials celebrating the holiday are few and far between, and "dads and grads" share shelf space in greeting card displays. Our house isn’t any different. On his Father’s Day, Tony made bacon and eggs and hash browns for the family after church, went to Costco and Jewel (twice) and, with the rest of the family’s help, trimmed the front bushes. Gifts were socks (but giving socks is kind of a thing in our family), a Blu-ray copy of Disney’s 1991 "Beauty and the Beast" and a lampshade, to replace one that broke the day before. But the cards — and Tony likes cards — were really good. Tony got to exercise his dad skills in all kinds of ways, from roughhousing and cuddling Teresa to driving downtown to pick Caroline up from work to lecturing Frank on the myriad dangers to avoid while driving the car, less than a week after he got his license. In a lot of ways, he’s following in the footsteps of his own father, who died five years ago. Before he died, there was no favor too big for him to do for one of his children or grandchildren, and no story too long for him to tell them. I’m pretty sure Tony knows how much he is loved, with older kids who will sit up late and talk to him. Caroline, studying screenwriting in college, shows him her favorite new TV shows and movies, Frank explains the minutiae of hockey to him again and again and Teresa cuddles up with him to watch "The Rifleman." For them, he’s the best dad ever. Maybe it’s appropriate that Father’s Day comes in June, after the end of the Easter season and usually somewhere around the feast of the Holy Trinity, when we talk more about God the Father. That happens just as we enter Ordinary Time, just as the weather turns hot and many of us take a summer vacation from church. But God is a father, after all, and he’s always there to listen when we need to unburden our souls, always there when we are ready to listen for what he wants to tell us. Even when we have made a mess of things. So happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there, and, yes, that includes granddads and stepdads and godfathers and people who willing assume the role of father-figure to people who need them. I know it’s not much, and I know it’s late, but if you’re a dad, I know you’ll be there to accept it anyway.