You Can't Buy This at Brookstone

Bryan is not one for ties. Or money clips. Chinos--never. He sucks at golf. It would seem that Father’s Day gift spreads in catalogs and magazines are geared more for celluloid dads than for real ones. Because if I had to assemble an assortment of Father’s Day ideas for my own dad it would be a page featuring one lonely succulent, some fizzy water, a bungee cord and cashews. Hardly the stuff of mark-ups and margin.

One tough aspect of motherhood, other than having to get up each morning at 5:30 to watch Yo Gabba Gabba, is that when your kid is just two years old you suddenly become responsible for buying not only your own dad a Father’s Day present but your husband, as well. Now I’ve been honoring my dad every third Sunday in June going on 35 years now. I know what works and what doesn’t. But Bryan? In his checkered Vans velcro wallet he still carries the unused gift certificate for the massage I bought him last Father’s Day. What’s a girl to do for the man who doesn’t have much and wants even less?

So this year I decided to give him something money can’t buy (back): his youth.

Once upon a time in the mid-to late-nineties Bryan looked very much like Lorenzo Lamas. With locks of chestnut tresses tangled with seawater, although to his credit Bryan never did sport a leather vest. Back then I wore dark red lipstick, ribbon chokers, leotards, palazzo pants. I might have been the one rockin' the leather vest. We all have our crosses to bear, but my cross wasn’t ceremoniously cut off by an effeminate hairdresser in the summer of 1998. I do not have a tin box housing an heirloom pair of suede clogs, a reliquary of my lost youth. Bryan, however, has this:

An eight inch ponytail.

To be fair, it's not as if Bryan has kept his shorn locks safe in the back of his underwear drawer all these years. In fact, perhaps even creepier, my mom has had his ponytail. Bryan was going to throw it away back in 1998 but my mom stopped him. She thought it would make a powerful talisman against evil spirits. Against what evil, I shudder to think.

So the other day my mom and I were at her house and came across this hairy shank of yesteryear. And I knew then what I would give Bryan this Sunday.

My husband, the father of my child--I am giving Bryan back his youth. His ponytail, and a roll of very sticky Scotch tape.

Stay tuned, for on Monday surely I will have a tale to tell of unending gratitude, of kisses sweet and nights spent watching 90210 and braiding each other's hair.