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I Accepted Father’s Day Gift-Giving Defeat. Until Now.

06.21.20
I Accepted Father’s Day Gift-Giving Defeat. Until Now. (Photo courtesy of Daisy Okazaki)

When your dad is a minimalist, figuring out ways to celebrate Father’s Day is tough. But after a lot of trial and error I think I’ve finally figured it out.

After years of my dad quietly rejecting my gifts — a lumpy ceramic cup, a robot alarm clock and a two-foot long scarf I knitted, I accepted gift-giving defeat. Instead, I painted him a card.

My dad is an amazing artist. As a kid, we would lay out newspapers on the table and he would let me use his fancy watercolors. When I got frustrated because my drawings didn’t look like his, he dragged a mirror into the kitchen and pointed out all the shapes that made up a face. That’s  how I learned everything I know about art. Those moments were part of shaping our relationship.

So every year, I steal the metal case of watercolors and spend an afternoon working on a card. 

It meant a lot when I saw the card I drew of my dad and me as Kiki and Jiji from the movie Kiki’s Delivery Service pinned above his desk. I felt like I had finally cracked the Father’s Day code.

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