Sunday is “Happy Father’s Day” time for the approximately 75 million fathers in the United States. In addition, it is time to remember the fathers who have passed away, yet live on in dear memory.
On one level, any fool can be a father, at least as far as genetics is concerned. You have to look no further than the daily glut of daytime talk shows to find evidence of that. Pope John XXIII put it this way: “It is easier for a father to have children than for children to have a real father.”
Real fathers, whether related to their children by blood or not, are the ones worthy of celebrating. Biology is not determinative here. Love is.
There are fathers who have adopted their children, and fathers who have become dads through marriage and through in-vitro fertilization. There are fathers who are widowed and fathers whose families have two dads (or more) because of remarriage. As long as their love is authentic and deep, no one can deny that they are “real fathers.”
Fathers have a lot to contend with these days, including popular cultural tropes that reduce fathers to buffoonish sitcom characters or heartless martinets. They have to care for and protect their children from dangers as old as time and from modern perils as well. They have to teach their sons and daughters ethics and morals and character in a world that at times seems confused about the difference between right and wrong.
Dads must recognize that they will make mistakes in the raising of their sons and daughters, make course corrections and learn to say the words, “I’m sorry.” Children must learn to see the wisdom in their father’s heart at last and reach the point where the words attributed to Mark Twain become true: “When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.”
Above all, a father, in Shakespeare’s words, needs to “know his own child.” Because in time, every child becomes something of stranger to his dad, as the child, one way or another, becomes a prodigal son or daughter.
To know that each child is unique in talents, gifts and needs helps prepare both father and child for their eventual journeys apart and the coming back together. Fathers must bear heartbreak and joy simultaneously as the son or daughter finds his or her way in the world, and possibly finds love outside of the family and, perhaps, through a family they start on their own.
When fathers have raised their kids, by hard work and good luck, to be upstanding, independent adults, they know that they have done their job.
Sunday is the day when children should take time to say “thank you and I love you” in some way. May your Father’s Day be filled with both gratitude and love.
***
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“A father should be his son’s first hero and his daughter’s first love.”