By Courtney Haden

 Really, could there be another holiday more superfluous than Father’s Day? As champagne flutes gaily clinked at the League of Women Commemorators in 1914, imagine the uncomfortable silence falling over the room as one quavery voice arose over the hubbub to ask, “But what about the men?”

Imagine further the discomfiture 48 years later at the National Association of Curmudgeons when news arrived that Lyndon Johnson, that pantywaist, had signed a resolution designating the third Sunday in June as Father’s Day.

“What’s the point?” one doubtless would have heard among the scratching of slacks and the slurping of tankards in the austerely-decorated lodge hall. “Isn’t every day Father’s Day?”

Not long ago, one of those organizations that makes news by making studies did so again in calculating what a mother’s salary might be were she paid for her maternal multitasking. Reflecting a quantum leap since the legendary Cleaver Study in 1958, possibly based on the impossibility of outsourcing washing dirty sweat socks, this new compensation analysis concluded that being a domestic goddess ought to pay $134,121 a year. The survey cited housekeeping, day care, cooking, van driving, janitorial services and psychological counseling among the several duties a mother puts in daily. Sounds fair, and why not throw in a little something for the pension fund while you’re at it.

However, in the interest of gender equity, surely one would agree that fathers deserve a little something extra in their fictitious pay envelope for their ancillary duties. Among them I would number barbecue grill work, the cause of countless thousands of singed eyebrows; yearly heavy machine maintenance — unclogging the disposal fits in this category — and varmint disposal.

Among the mothers clamoring to disagree, let me see a show of hands from those willing to peel the moribund mouse off the glue trap. I thought so.

I can address the subject of fatherhood with even more annoying blitheness than I usually bring to other subjects in this space because I have absolutely no experience. My peers have sired and sired again, to the point that their offspring have started replicating, but never once have I had to change a diaper because I had to. Perhaps I’m just saving that skill for the nursing home.

This is not to say I have skimped on fatherly activities altogether, for on more than one occasion I have been called on to provide supervisory services in the capacity of brother, uncle, cousin or only-guy-in-the-waiting- room-while-the-receptionist-runs-to- the-bathroom. On each occasion I have performed with sparkling indifference, with my charges’ responses ranging from idle unconcern to active rebellion.

Recently, though, I have called on to preside in a new capacity, that of step-grandfather. This is a gig even cushier than straight grandfathering because the position is practically off the limb of the family tree.

Consequently, the interchange between mewling infant and muttering adult is free of any inhibiting Freudian overtones. We are free to create a dialogue unfettered by the need to instruct or the compulsion to obey. There’ll be a hovering maternal figure along in a few minutes, after all, anxious to whisk up the child and do all that nurturing stuff.

The partner in my particular dialogue is named Alexa Maria, and unlike any other child in her age bracket, she is really, really smart. While she was only days old, I took it upon myself to teach her vowel sounds, not out of any neurotic need to get her ready for preschool, but because I sound rather authoritative saying the letters O and U. Though her eyes were still unable to focus on my wizened visage, I knew she was already grasping the fundamentals of language and might well burst out with a sonnet at any time.

Alexa was particularly taken with sonorities, as I found out in the wee hours one morning when she was visiting and no other means could be found to lull her into slumber. I perched her daintily upon my thorax and chanted Aum until I was seeing mandalas on the ceiling from lack of oxygen and she was snoozing like a county clerk on a break. Of course, the next time I tried it, she was wise to my intentions and seemed to take cruel delight in harmonically matching her crying to my chanting. Whereupon one of the aforementioned maternal figures marched out, saying something like, “For the love,” whisked up the wailer and used one of those mysterious nurturing methods of inducing somnolence.

That was a long time ago, when she was still a baby. Alexa turns 1 year old this month and she’s far too sophisticated to fall for something as corny as vowels anymore. Awhile back we were reading Parade Magazine together, the issue featuring the world’s worst dictators, and out of all the options, she chose Kim Jong-il. Pretty, smart and she has a flair for international diplomacy.

Alexa Maria’s the kind of kid that makes a step-grandfather proud ...

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