P I N G !!! Come post a reply to the title question, and invite a few dozen friends over...
Posted on 06/10/2002 9:20:03 PM PDT by The Good Hunter
Here in the year 2002, Father's Day is on Sunday, June 16. So what is fatherhood, and where does it begin?
The second part first: fatherhood begins at conception. It is at conception that the father and mother are conjoined to produce new life. It is at conception that the most beautiful thing on the planet, the God-blessed spark of innocent human life, begins its journey through existence.
From that moment, every good father loves his baby, and is moved by a need to protect, defend, and care for her from that moment, through all the days of her life. This empathy, this compassion and emotional investment, is a society builder. It is what gives fathers the motivation to take care of their children, to work, to build homes, and to make the world a safer place.
What is fatherhood?
Fatherhood is being there for one's children, from the beginning, and through babyhood, toddlerhood, and all the years of the shared lives…through all the changes, through all the challenges, and all the blessings that life brings. Fatherhood is as simple as holding a bottle in one hand, with your infant son or daughter cradled by the other arm, and singing half-remembered lullabies first heard decades earlier…half-remembering lyrics and melodies, half re-writing them while singing.
Fatherhood is walking with your toddler, finding ways to half-step and go slow so that little feet can keep up, and so that little eyes can unhurriedly browse the world around them, unveiled anew as the whole world becomes within their vision.
Fatherhood is being willing to kneel down on ground level, and to sincerely offer absolute attentiveness to an epiphany your little one might be having about an interesting twig or colored pebble found on the path.
Fatherhood is holding your daughter or son up when they point to a tree, or a sparrow, or a particular cloud, knowing that they are enthralled by their own powers of discovery, and encouraging those powers.
Fatherhood is nurturing the innocence and good faith that is God's most precious gift to all the world.
Fatherhood is reading the Dr. Seuss books to your little one, even though you know how they end.
Fatherhood is protecting, protecting your daughters and sons from peril and from adverse influences.
Fatherhood is teaching, giving your children the gift of exploring their own capabilities.
That may take the form of setting up an obstacle course, with old tires and toy safety cones, and running races. Or it may take the form of hiking up Pacific Northwest forest trails, the best in the all the country, and learning the survival skills suited to a day of trekking through the wilderness. Or, it may take the form of talking about a first day of school, and providing an avid audience for stories about new things learned, new academic skills tested.
Fatherhood is the linchpin, the critical element that holds everything else together, in every healthy society. Indeed, the health of a country, in our case the United States of America, correlates directly to the degree that fathers are co-equally raising their children, in the home, as a family.
Eight months ago, my first column for Toogood Reports was on the spirit of heroism. It was written in the immediate wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and spoke of how firefighters and other rescue workers were getting the respect that they always deserved. What prompted that respect was the most devastating attack on our country since Pearl Harbor, sixty years before.
I wrote a lot in that article, which is still available in the Toogood Reports archives, about the power of heroism, and the good that it does for society, and how society had been shocked back into a respect for the true, untainted, Norman Rockwell power of the goodness and heroism that we saw from firefighters risking their own lives to save innocent victims on September 11, 2001.
It occurs to me that everything I said about firefighters applies to fathers, and could be a part of this early Father's Day article. Fatherhood is America's most critical natural resource, and can do immeasurable good for a nation on the brink. Let's not wait for another cataclysm to respect that.
The vast majority of fathers are good men and good parents, with incredible, natural paternal instincts which connect them to their children in a deep, primal way which supercedes and goes beyond the traditions, or cultural routines, or political waves-of-the-moment in any country on Earth.
There are certain sociopolitical movements that regularly decry "patriarchy" or "paternalism". However, these are things that we have too little of, not too much. These are things that we need more of, not less.
For true strength, true value, lies not in who is the figurehead of the moment, on the periphery of life as a Silicon Valley CEO or the President of the United States. There is something as far above and beyond those circumstantial shadows of reality as the edge of the universe is beyond our own spinning globe.
That something is parenthood: presence and co-equal involvement in the daily lives of one's sons and daughters… in the home, on the family farm, in the simple, routine matters of ordinary, everyday life.
It is there that true strength and true value prevail.
Family. Home. Fatherhood.
Life.
Happy Father's Day 2002, for all fathers past, future, and present.
I send them off to lunch and movies...my treat.
Downing a brew. At the local watering hole. Watching the History Channel.
It's the only time I can get control of the TV.
prisoner6
| A Father is a person that growls when he feels good.... A Father never feels entirely worthy of the worship in a child's eyes. So he works too hard to try to smooth the rough places in the road for those of his own who will follow him. Fathers have very stout hearts; so they have to be broken sometimes or no one would know what he is made of inside. Fathers give daughters away to other men who aren't nearly good enough...so they can have grandchildren that are smarter than anybody's. Fathers fight dragons daily. They never quite win the fight, but they never give up. |
Except Fox in Socks. You're allowed to skip that one.
P I N G !!! Come post a reply to the title question, and invite a few dozen friends over...
Yeah that was good the first few years. For the next few I sent Wife AND Kidz away. Now it's easier if I leave.
prisoner6
With all the reverence accorded Mother's Day, I do like to point out that to dial MOM on a touch-tone phone, you have to press 666. (Even I don't take that too seriously; most 666's are great.) It's just nice to see a flattering article about us 323's.
Being a grand323 is even better. You can concentrate on the wonders and joys without everything having to be a lesson about right and wrong and "Don't touch that". If you did your job properly, your sons and daughters will take care of the dirty work.
As for this Father's Day, I'll be at my 4 year old grand766's birthday party. He's cool.
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