Let's start at the very beginning. A very good place to start. Doe..a daddy, a very good daddy etc...
I am 54. My daughter is 11. We started late.. I'm talking about self and wife. Daughter started with the gun. No lags.
Tomorrow is father's day. My daughter is excited. I am too. It's a Sunday. It's special. There's gonna be chocolate cake.
Before I had parents, I had two grand fathers, as most people do. One was a district judge, the other dabbled in business. They were not extraordinary in any way... except possibly fathering. Each had six children, all of whom grew up reasonably. My maternal grandfather lost a daughter in her infancy. But that was par for the course in the 1940s. They, and their wives, parented naturally. The child became man, or woman, and life went on.
As the world evolved, parenting changed. Yesterday, a friend called up to say that he and his wife were routing themselves through Dubai on a chartered flight to settle their daughter in Ithaca. She's joining Cornell, bright kid, average mark sheets...liberal arts.
Set me thinking. When people we know took the ship across the seas to distant shores, when they ate stale bread in a cold land with the dream of being accepted at the bar, when they relocated from east to west of a political divide, with nothing to hold on to except their parents' hands...their fathers were around somewhere. Were they fine? Did they do right?
The world has changed. We have evolved. Fathering is not the same. There are enough power point presentations to tell you how you should be...or not!
Maybe, we, fathers, need to let those buds blossom .... they'll flower in their own way.
I want to be a good father. But not a lifetime nurse.
But then again, if my daughter complains of a belly ache, I reach for a paediatrician. Aqua Ptychotis or _jowaner_ _arok_ is passe. We are hands on.
In this world of confused contradiction, life goes on.
My daughter feels parents should be her best friends...she learnt that somewhere along the way, from the environment. While admitting that I was not exactly her best friend, I asked her the meaning of inextricable. She was lost. I told her that it meant her dad. And good luck to best friends. She would have a father for life. Neither she nor me can do much about it. She and me.... they rhyme.
When, at 22, fresh and vulnerable, I left home, my dad wished me well. He didn’t run the run with me, though. But then, I never really baked him a cake and wished him Happy Father’s Day either.
This is for my dad(and Ma too) and his(and her) dad...you did well...I just missed the special days.
I still miss those days.
Happy Father's Day to all dads here. Maybe we should hold that hand...and maybe we should let it go.
