Parenting is hard work and the most important job
any of us, who so choose, will ever do. To be responsible for another human
being, to provide nourishment for the body, mind and soul, to teach by book
and example, to make strong physically and emotionally, to give love
freely expecting nothing in return -- that is the definition of a parent.
However, the joining of egg and sperm does not a
mother or father make. That biological process guarantees only one thing -- the
continuation of the species. There is no magical hormone that provides a rush
of maternal or paternal instinct, making us instantly loving caregivers. Real
mothers and fathers are not the result of bloodline.
You may think this an odd opening for a Father’s
Day tribute, but our world no longer resembles Mayberry where everyone and
everything is exactly as it appears to be. Today fathers sometimes have to be
mothers and mothers sometimes have to be fathers. Sometimes grandparents are
forced – by love and obligation – to re-assume a responsibility that by virtue
of age should no longer be theirs to bear. Parents come in many forms because becoming
a parent is relatively easy. Becoming a mother or father… that’s something
different.
People often tell me I am strong like my mother.
They’re wrong. I get my strength from my dad. He was a gentle man; a
soft-spoken man who never raised his voice or his hand in anger. He was hard as
stone when he needed to be but soft as velvet when my sister and I needed a
hand to hold. He was a stranger to prejudice and racism. Those words did not
even exist in his vocabulary. He had a high school education – actually a GED
which he received in his 50s – but he was smart… very, very smart. There was no
question he could not answer, no math problem he could not solve; no sentence
he could not diagram. He was a story teller and a poet. I get my love of words
and language from him.
My dad had great wisdom, but that wisdom was both
a blessing and a curse. He felt everything so deeply. If my sister or I stubbed
our toe, dad shared the pain. If young love broke our hearts, he cried with us.
In the end, it was love that ended his life and we cried.
Children make decisions that parents know are
wrong but have no power to stop. Many years ago I made just such a decision and
it nearly cost my life. My dad wasn’t so
lucky. His health was weakened by the worry he felt for me. His heart – the one
that broke whenever my heart was broken – finally gave out. He never got to see
me happy. He never got to see me live the life he had wished for me.
I have spent my parenting years trying to live up
to the example set by my father. I’ve done my damnest to be the best mother I
can be… and I think I’ve succeeded but the credit goes to him. He was my role
model, my teacher… my dad!
So, today I want to thank all the men who have
given so deeply of themselves to guarantee that their sons and daughters are
protected from harm. I want to thank all of you who have put your children
first and yourselves last. This “thank you” is for all the daddies – no matter
how old you are – who held your children’s hands in the dark and led them to a
safer place.
By the way – people say that girls marry their
fathers. I know I did so this thank you is to my husband as well for being the
father to our children that my father was to me.
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