FATHER'S DAY

It’s Father’s Day. Mother’s Day was last month. It’s a nice idea, so politically correct, sort of an obligatory, ‘Show Respect Day’. It doesn’t make up for all those ‘Get even with Mom & Dad’ days when they were 12 & 13 but hopefully they balance out. You can come at it from either direction, as a child reflecting on the parents of your growing up or as a parent, remembering your kids before they became whatever it is that they have become. My kids have been checking in with shout outs throughout the day. It’s really nice that they still like you. My growing up experience was still unfolding when they came along. It gives the saying, ‘Blind leading the blind’ a different twist. If we had put off having children until we could afford them and knew enough to be prepared, we would be an endangered species. So kids are just a generation behind on the learning curve, like the next cog on a very big gear. Having a smart 14 year old can be the best of times or the worst and you won’t know which until you get there. So Father’s Day is also 1st Born’s Day, and Next Born’s Day and so on until you run out of Borns. As a father, you open your mind and realize you’ve been acting out a part that was written into the script a million years ago. Homo sapiens is a paradigm that has no other function than to sustain. So while we find food and a safe place to sleep, we procreate then nurture our little ones until they can do for themselves. Come Mother’s and Father’s Days, we yield to our culture and say, “Thank You Mom & Dad.” Between what we know and how we feel, the bond somehow defines us.

I understand my parents better now, especially after having children of my own. When you are a kid, they just are and it just is. However they frame the picture, that becomes your normal. By the time I was old enough to study multiplication tables, I knew they were inseparable. I knew their word was sacred to them and that they would protect me, even when I was in trouble. Over time, growing up and looking in my own children’s eyes I realized when they were not buying what I was selling. Mom and Dad would both be disappointed that their born-again religion died with them and that the legacy of their southern culture did not take root in me. But love has power that ideas can not shake. Mom would dispel my dismissal of the 10 Commandments but she would love that I replaced them with the Golden Rule. She wouldn’t like that I don’t bow my head or pray but she would walk the high meadow with me and agree that it is a holy place. Dad took his racist legacy into his 70’s but confided in me, “We was wrong.” He would be uncomfortable with people of color who I break bread with but he would approve of me and my choice. There was a time when I didn’t want to be anything like him. Those areas; his temper tantrums, closed mind, resistance to change, I’m nothing like him. I wasn’t buying what I thought he was selling. But then, the other stuff, it was going on at another level and I reek of it. Mom & Dad, wherever you are, I remember the good times and the hard times. Sometimes the hard times were good times. I lean hard on your integrity and your character, always taking the high road. If I could rewrite history, all I would change would be to have talked more often, about anything, before you had to go.