Dad's egg cup - 2026
photo by Styrous®
Today is Father's Day, a time to reflect on childhood relations; for honoring one's father, as well as fatherhood, paternal bonds, and the influence of fathers in society as well as one's life. To say he had a major impact on my life is putting it mildly. His egg cup is a case in point.
I took care of him the last twelve years of his life; in the beginning I started tending to his finances, rent, utilities, his car (he had my old '62 Volkswagen bus which I eventually had to take away from him) . . .
. . because he kept forgetting to take care of them. By the end he had full blown Alzheimer's. During that time, although I'm not a great cook, I would cook his meals which included breakfast. He had to have eggs every morning and his eggs had to be cooked exactly as follows: almost soft boiled with the yokes not quite runny but NOT hard boiled, they had to be done exactly perfect. After a couple of years I found this ceramic egg cup that held the egg in the exact position so you could crack the shell and scoop out the egg. He LOVED that cup and looked forward to eating from it every single morning!
I would take care of his other needs while cooking it, getting clothes together to wash, folding the ones washed, getting him ready for the day care (I was working at he time), etc. and of course, couldn't watch the egg cook. If the egg was not done EXACTLY the way he liked it, he absolutely refused to eat it and I would have to cook another one. After I cooked the other one, of course there was the one he wouldn't eat. It made me crazy! What to do with it? I didn't always want an egg for breakfast but I was raised to never waste food, so I ate it. I must have eaten a million eggs I didn't want.
So, here it is Father's Day. It's been a quarter century since he died and I'll be damned, I still have his egg cup! Tom fell in love with it as well and used it as a salt cellar! This caused the top and metal rim to corrode and he had to stop using it but he kept it anyway.
It's very, very hard to give up things you've come to cherish.
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Father's Day was first proposed by Sonora Smart Dodd of Spokane, Washington, in 1909; Dodd was born in Jenny Lind, Sebastian County, Arkansas. It is currently celebrated in the United States annually on the third Sunday in June.
It did not have much success initially. In the 1920s, Dodd stopped promoting the celebration while she was studying at the Art Institute of Chicago, and it faded into relative obscurity, even in Spokane. In the 1930s, Dodd returned to Spokane and started promoting the celebration again, raising its awareness at a national level. She had the help of those trade groups that would benefit most from the
holiday, for example the manufacturers of ties, tobacco pipes, and any
traditional presents to fathers. Americans resisted the holiday at first, perceiving it as just an attempt by merchants to replicate the commercial success of Mother's Day, and newspapers frequently featured cynical and sarcastic attacks and jokes. But the trade groups did not give up: they kept promoting it and even
incorporated the jokes into their adverts, and they eventually
succeeded. By the mid-1980s, the Father's Council wrote that "(...) [Father's Day]
has become a Second Christmas for all the men's gift-oriented
industries."
A bill to accord national recognition of the holiday was introduced in Congress in 1913. In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson went to Spokane to speak at a Father's Day celebration and wanted to make it official, but Congress resisted, fearing that it would become commercialized. (Ummm . . ?) US President Calvin Coolidge recommended in 1924 that the day be observed by the nation but stopped short of issuing a national proclamation. Two earlier attempts to formally recognize the holiday had been defeated by Congress. In 1957, Maine Senator Margaret Chase Smith
wrote a proposal accusing Congress of ignoring fathers for 40 years
while honoring mothers, thus "[singling] out just one of our two
parents". In 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson issued the first presidential proclamation honoring fathers, designating the third Sunday in June as Father's Day. Six years later, the day was made a permanent national holiday when President Richard Nixon signed it into law on April 24, 1972.
American stand-up comedian and writer Ali Siddiq has a hilarious take on the concept of Father's Day on YouTube (link below).
So, here's to you Pops & Tom!
Happy Father's Day!
photo by Styrous®
Styrous® ~ Father's Day, Sunday, June 21, 2026
