I spent this weekend working with my father in a 7-by-14 foot ice cream and doughnut trailer serving thousands of hungry patrons at the Sandwich Fair.

“Candy Leif,” “Anderson,” “that older guy with the doughnuts”, my father, is 57 years old and happier to be alive now than he has been in any preceding year of his life.

Part of the reason, he’d tell you at great length if you allowed him, is because he finally knows what it means to be a “real man.”

The conversation happened in pieces throughout the weekend. It began between a hot fudge sundae everything but nuts, and a chocolate malt.

I whirled around from my post at the freezer and I saw him smashing the top of a Hershey’s syrup bottle against the counter.

I couldn’t believe it. This behavior I would expect to see out of some twenty-year old at a house party, but from my dad?

I laughed at the sight and asked, “you can’t possibly think that is the best way to open that?”

He looked down, laughed at himself and said, “well, no, but I felt cool doing it.”

This brought to mind other times I had caught him in similar acts. Our family is predominantly males and the familiar chant of “Anderson Men, Anderson Men” can be heard right before some piece of furniture get’s thrown into a burn pile.

Yet somehow, I respect these men like few others I have known.

That night we continued to talk about my father and his life.

We talked about men we’d both known at the fairs, those we’d know from church, school, and other areas of our lives too.

At at the end of it all he told me he has known a lot of “real men,” during his life. Usually terms like this confuse me, however this time, I think I knew what he meant.

For my father, the defining characteristic of real men, is that they show love. Love for their wives and families, love for their work and a kind of secure love for themselves. For my father, real men finish what they start and make good on their word. Real men work until the job is done right. Whether it is teaching their child to throw a ball or getting a recipe just right, real men, even when it makes them seem stubborn, work tirelessly until the job is done right.

Real men give willingly their time, advice, money, and so on, even if it is outside of their means because they know they all belong to the same bigger picture. And real men aren’t too proud to show they care. They hug their children in public and are not too timid or proud to hold their wive’s hands in front of their friends.

As most conversations with my father end with some sort of joke, this one followed suite as he told me, “I wish I had this sage like wisdom in my youth.” Which is why, even though I am a girl, I am writing this column today.