Happy Father’s Day!
[NOTE: This a slightly edited version of a previous post of mine.]
It’s Father’s Day. A sort of poor stepchild to Mother’s Day, although fathers themselves are hardly that. They are central to a family.
Just ask the people who never had one, or who had a difficult relationship with theirs. Or ask the people who were nurtured in the strength of a father’s love and guidance.
Of course, the complex world being what it is, and people and families being what they are, it’s the rare father-child relationship that’s entirely conflict-free. But for the vast majority, love is almost always present, even though at times it can be hard to express or to perceive. It can take a child a very long time to see it or feel it; but that’s part of what growing up is all about. And “growing up” can go on even in adulthood, or old age.
Father’s Day—or Mother’s Day, for that matter—can wash over us in a wave of treacly sentimentality. But the truth of the matter is often stranger, deeper, and more touching. Sometimes the words of love catch in the throat before they’re spoken. But they can still be sensed. Sometimes a loving father is lost through distance or misunderstanding, and then regained.
There’s an extraordinary poem by Robert Hayden that depicts one of these uneasy father-child connections—the shrouded feelings, both paternal and filial, that can come to be seen in the fullness of time as the love that was always, always there. I offer it on this Father’s Day to all of you.
THOSE WINTER SUNDAYS
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house.Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
They are central to a family.
Glad to hear it.
But for many, men in a domestic setting are understood to be pets, employees, or ATM machines. Which is to say that fathers in a social sense do not exist.
Given the social distancing and all, church services are sparse. Takes away from clergymen the opportunity to give this year’s Cat’s-in-the-Cradle sermon. I’m sure they’re crestfallen.
I compliment you on your use of “treacly,” madam.
Somehow we all know a father’s love is more fraught than a mother’s. Here’s my favorite father poem by a poet few know, but anyone who has read modern poetry has likely been touched by.
James Laughlin was a skilled poet in his own right, but he also used his inheritance to found “New Directions Publishing” which provided space for an astonishing number of great 20th century writers.
______________________________
Step On His Head
Let’s step on daddy’s head shout
the children my dear children as
we walk in the country on a sunny
summer day my shadow bobs dark on
the road as we walk and they jump
on its head and my love of them
fills me all full of soft feelings
now I duck with my head so they’ll
miss when they jump they screech
with delight and I moan oh you’re
hurting you’re hurting me stop
they jump all the harder and love
fills the whole road but I see it run
on through the years and I know
how some day they must jump when
it won’t be this shadow but really
my head (as I stepped on my own
father’s head) it will hurt really
hurt and I wonder if then I will
have love enough will I have love
enough when it’s not just a game?
— James Laughlin
Michael Towns: “I compliment you on your use of “treacly,” madam.”
I know where your heart is but I learned the hard way to never, ever call a woman “madam”. When I was a young lad I got a job at a local Country Club. One night there was a gala event at the club’s posh restaurant. I volunteered for the job of seating the guests and taking their drink order. At this time I was quite accustomed to addressing men as “sir” but in my mind I was at a loss on how to address a woman. I remembered back to all the black & white films on late night television. “Madam” I thought, that’s perfect! Well it didn’t turn out so well. This middle-aged ripped me a new one in front of everyone. From that moment forward I vowed never to volunteer for customer service jobs. I’ll take a job washing dishes any day.
Treacle? What’s you problem Michael Towns?
Like many others I can identify with the poem. I think that my father and I had a good relationship, but we never talked about personal things. I don’t know whether it was the times; or whether it was our nature. I do know that I had no desire to venture there.
It was only long after I had matured that I began to really appreciate him.We might have had a more open relationship if he had lived longer. For instance, as the decades pass, I have found that I really want my daughters and grandchildren to know how much they mean to me; and I try to express it overtly. Is it the times; or is it natural as temporal horizons close in? I was harder, and more reticent in the early years. My expressions of love had more to do with being there when needed, than with overt signals.
Know what I mean Michael Towns?
Fathers’ Day does not have the florist industry behind it.
Mike K, men in general don’t respond to cut flowers like the fairer sex. We’d rather have something that has utility: a screwdriver, a case of motor oil, stuff like that.
Brian – we gave our local son chocolates, but yeah, I getcha.
We get all of them some useful stuff through the year, so Father’s Day is for luxuries.
“Fathers’ Day does not have the florist industry behind it.”
I really don’t think they stand behind the mothers so much either, as much as they do the money.
I’ve looked around, not just at friends, but at anyone I know in the white intelligentsia, and it’s stunning to see how few, male or female, have parented a child.
It’s been said, “The future belongs to those who show up.”
The Father’s Day poem is effective in painting a word picture I suppose. But what strikes me is the working in of a little extra subjective color, a touch of grim indictment to go along with the acknowledgement.
Poets, so many at any rate, present as such sensitive litte punks. Maybe they did fear chronic angers … every morning. Maybe their family lives were a kind of living hell. Family dysfunction is of course a common enough theme in literature, and what we now call media. It seems to be the default state of reported affairs among progressives for the most part. If they are telling the truth.
But what is a dysfunctional family but some number of related persons, some of whom are themselves troubled or dysfunctional, living under the same roof or associating with each other because of a genetic or familial connection.
Effed up individuals, making effed up families, and extending the effect of their internal issues, insofar as possible, to everyone with whom they associate.
My own father, like the poet, but unlike the poet, described his father rising early, in a chilly house, performing the same banked fire operation, setting the kettle for tea, letting it steep a long while as he shaved, and then matter of factly setting off for work in the cold, as others roused in a warming house. No armosphere poisoned by alcoholism, anger, resentments, or loveless bitterness. No poetry there, I guess.
I’m sick to death of troubled people, Goddamn them, and their issues both. They spread their internal misery to everyone they encounter; and it is their joy, this never ending revenge which they take upon the world of men and women who have nothing to do with them, or their troubles. They cannot even praise without working their resentments in against those whom they prsise.
It might be a shame that our good friend Miklos` acquaintances have no offspring. But given the arts related circles I understand him to have moved in, maybe not so much. On the other hand he seems such an amiable uncomplaining guy; and I would wish him 10 offspring if he wanted them.
I was talking to my neighbor about her happy vigorous homeschooled brood of seven the other day ( she is a registered nurse and a graduate music teacher) , and about the reactions she and her husband have gotten from censorius liberal strangers who have attempted to shame her. I’ll remind her on the basis of Miklos’ comments to mention to them that she is just using up the 2.1 they have left on the table. It a much more temperate response than I originally suggested.
Here’s to fathers like my own. Calm, intelligent, brave, manly, protective and concientious, his word good and reliable; aspiring, undaunted, easy in manner, competent in execution, successful in life, admired by everyone from casual acquaintances to his own wife.
Yes, though born without wealth, he was, in fact gifted with better than average personal resources, including what women asserted were movie star good looks. But I have known bald headed old farmers, overgrown galumphing wrench toting yahoos, and poised country club members, with essentially the same virtues both as men and as fathers.
Here’s to them all, men of character and competence.
“I’ll remind her on the basis of Miklos’ comments to mention to them that she is just using up the 2.1 they have left on the table.” – DNW
We had five kids, which drew a few raised eyebrows from time to time.
Occasionally, someone would ask, “Are those all yours?”
My favorite response, which came from a Reader’s Digest joke IIRC, was, “No. I checked them out of the library.”
We spent a great deal of our time IN libraries, so maybe it wasn’t totally facetious.
My 3 siblings have no children, so we are still short-changing the family tree.