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Father’s Day musings and poetry — 16 Comments

  1. My father was born in 1911. Circumstances dictated that he drop out of school in the 4th grade so that he could work on the farm and help support his family. And yet he was a voracious reader and never quit wanting to learn about the world he lived in.

    I can honestly say that:
    I never heard him curse.
    I never heard him speak harshly to anyone.
    I never heard him disparage anyone behind their back.

    He was a skilled craftsman and worked very, very hard. He earned some really good money for the time. And yet he never bought anything for himself. He wore the same suit of clothes and brown wingtip shoes to church every Sunday until all of we six kids were grown and independent.

    I never began to appreciate what he had done until I became a father myself. He has been gone for 22 years now and I still miss him every day.

  2. rickl: have you ever read the essay “Why There Are Box Scores” by Ron Powers? It appeared in The Bread Loaf Anthology of Contemporary American Essays, ed. Robert Puck and Jay Parini, 1989. Wonderful work. Here’s an excerpt:

    A box score, yellowed and curling with age, beckons out of some drawer; a wisp of papyrus inscribed with the codes of saga. I spread it out on the desk before me and peer at the miniature hieroglyphics. And a night bursts back into being, a hot arc lighted St. Louis night twenty-nine years gone, a popcornsmelling July night inside the green geometries of the old Busch Stadium at Grand and Dodier streets. (How can I remember Dodier Street when I have trouble remembering whether my present van is a Chrysler or a Ford?)

    Details rush into my consciousness. Not just the game, but an epoch in my life reassembles itself. (Ah, if Proust had only followed the box scores!) It is the night of July 16, 1958, a Wednesday, and I am, with wild improbability, at the ballpark with my father and mother and brother and uncle and aunt. I am 16, at the precipice of my boyhood. My father has organized this trip down from Hannibal, in two Nashes, one hundred ten miles along the Mississippi River, to see the Cardinals play host to the defending World Champion Milwaukee Braves. My father, the Fuller Brush Man: his worshipful love of the Redbirds is matched only by his chronic, Depression-induced reluctance to commit himself to such splurges of eyewitness pleasure. One Sunday doubleheader a season, maximum value, is about our limit. The rest of the year we live via Harry Caray’s radio play-by-play and the box scores.

    But—a weeknight game! Under the lights, the great arc lights! This night is a gift, and to add to it, my father has driven like a hero through St. Louis’s evil streets. It is one of the few nights in my life when I can enjoy, through him, the intimations of my own impending manhood.

    Much more, of course. Unfortunately, it’s not online.

  3. Very evocative poem…the thoughtless acceptance of parental sacrifice spans the ages.

  4. I have heard/ read Ann Coulter complain about all the emphasis on single mothers. At first I was not sure what to think of this-maybe thinking she was being rude. But i think i know what she was saying. There is a movement in our society that says thay Single parenthood, especially by women-is the ideal rather than the unfortunate situation of an imperfect world.

    I know a number of single mothers- moslty because of divorce-and they do what they can and love their children deeply. But this should never be held up as the ideal family model. It is what it is in this imperfect world. But it is not the ideal.

  5. Perhaps i should say the movement is trying to say single parent hood is equal to the traditional family-which it is not.

  6. I grew up in a father-less home, through no fault of my mother. Those people who think that fathers are unnecessary, and that a single mother can be just as effective at raising a well-adjusted child as a father and mother together, are remarkably clueless.

    At the time I knew I was missing a lot, but I didn’t actually realize just how much until I was, maybe, 25 years old. Then I gradually began to realize how ill equipped I was to function in the real world. There is so much that a boy needs to learn about how to function in society, how to relate to other men, and especially how to relate to women. No matter how good the mother is, she will never be able to provide the same emotional skills. I don’t know if the same is true for girls, but I suspect that there is a lot girls can learn from fathers, too.

  7. Fathers. A fine sentiment, but only a sentiment I’m afraid. Because there’s a new “longitudinal” study that proves children from lesbian families are happier, better adjusted, and like themselves better.

    Most people don’t know what longitudinal means, but they can rest assured that the social science behind the study is very objective. It was a National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study.

    The study was funded and conducted by lesbians whose data was what lesbians said about their kids. The longitudinal conclusions will serve as expert testimony in court cases.

    I guess since its longitudinal, its good. No refuting that. They got us there. I wonder which holiday the kids will pick to honor their lesbian parents.

    http://townhall.com/columnists/JaniceShawCrouse/2010/06/19/lesbian_mothers_think_their_children_are_all_above_average

  8. The study was funded and conducted by lesbians whose data was what lesbians said about their kids.

    Can’t get much more reliable than that.

    The longitudinal conclusions will serve as expert testimony in court cases.

    Especially as there’s no motivation to put a thumb on the scales.

  9. Happy Father’s Day to all the Fathers out there (including me).

    This was a very special day shared with my Wife and Daughter. My heart is overflowing with gratitude for all the blessings and love I have received. Just want to share it and hope that other Fathers had a very special day too.

  10. I called my Pappy from the Lincoln Diner in Gettysburg, on my way back from hiking on the Appalachian Trail this weekend…

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  12. Thank you for the poem. It struck a chord. In gratitude, I offer some fine lines Tom Wolfe wrote about fathers in Bonfire of the Vanities. It speaks to another aspect of fatherhood, and sons:

    “Sherman made the terrible discovery that men make about their fathers sooner or later that the man before him was not an aging father but a boy, a boy much like himself, a boy who grew up and had a child of his own and, as best he could, out of a sense of duty and, perhaps love, adopted a role called ‘Being a Father’ so that his child would have something mythical and infinitely important: a Protector, who would keep a lid on all the chaotic and catastrophic possibilities of life.”

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