I know that Father’s Day is still two weeks away, however, beginning next Thursday, I will be taking a couple of weeks off. I’m travelling to Canada on a fishing trip with my brother, Don. We will be in a rather remote area so my Weekend Motivations will also be on vacation until the last week of June. Unfortunately, that also means I won’t be in spending Father’s Day with two sons and my grandson.
My absence compels me to spend a few minutes reflecting on what I believe is the greatest achievement of my life – fatherhood. As I have commented before, it seems that we have holidays for everything and every occasion–from Ground Hog Day to Columbus Day–virtually every day, we celebrate seem to honor or celebrate something. In keeping with that propensity, on June 20th we will publically honor our fathers. I certainly don’t want to denigrate that holiday, but in reality, we don’t need a special day to do publically what most of us do in our hearts all year long. However, to the extent that Father’s Day affords us the opportunity to celebrate and reflect on the blessings and riches that accrue from fatherhood, it is a wonderful holiday!
There are two maxims–or two sides of one maxim–that make a very important point about fatherhood in general. It’s a wise father who knows his own child, and a wise child who knows his own father. As babies, we begin with the assumption that father knows everything; as teenagers we are apt to lean more to the theory that father knows nothing; as adults we finally come to the point where we know our father, what makes him tick, how much he means to us–and how much he has put in, and put up with, in the process of our growing up.
Kids find it easy to excuse their own mistakes because every next step in life is still new to them. But fathering is also an experience where every step as the children are growing up is also a new one for good old Dad. In a family relationship, part of what makes it memorable is the process of learning together–the joy of a father suddenly realizing that somehow or other he has helped to bring up somebody of whom he can be proud and even admire–and who is proud of and concerned about him.
Fatherhood is basically a long battle to make a dependent independent. It is a constant and steady struggle to keep the next generation from making the last generation’s mistakes and to change the generation gap into a generation bond. I have been fortunate to be a soldier in that battle, although I must admit that often I have failed to be a good one. Nevertheless, I can now look back and happily salute myself as a winner–I hesitate to use the word survivor because the process of fatherhood, while trying, is not fatal.
The Crosby, Stills and Nash song implores the children to “teach your parents well” and to never “ask them why, cause if they told you, you would cry, so just look at them and sigh, and know they love you.” All of us are children. Many of us, in our time, become parents and grandparents, and some of us have the happy occasion to salute or be saluted by another generation along the way. Some of us are chips off the old block and some of us are regarded more as splinters. But all of us can join in saluting fatherhood. It is the one job that, upon retirement, most all of us can reflect back and unequivocally say, “That was a DAD-gummed good idea!
I’ll be back in two weeks, until then, please remember to have an AWE-full time and Father’s Day!
Bill Bacque