Everyday Canvas

Fathers

Prompt: Fathers
“If there is any immortality to be had among us human beings, it is certainly only in the love that we leave behind. Fathers like mine don’t ever die.”
Leo Buscaglia
What role has time played in your assessment of fathers and fatherhood?

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Well, not everyone's relationship can be as fortunate as that of Leo Buscaglia's with his father, for each good relationship goes both ways.

When I was born, the second World War was going on and my father was doing work for the forces and wasn't there. I didn't get to see or know him much until later, when I was six, which by that time, he and my mother had separated. He died a few months after I had spent a short time with him, about one and a half months. Then, partly through my mother's influence, I thought the worst of him as I grew up. In hindsight, however, I don't blame him for anything. He was doing his best with what life had thrown at him.

For most other people, when they are young, their dads seem larger than life. They fix everything and they always know the answers. They act as a wall of strength and a shelter from harm. Yet, this appreciation may not last very long.

When I was a teenager, I saw in my friends how their younger positive views of their fathers were beginning to shift. Suddenly, their dads turned clueless in their opinion. So the teenagers began to push boundaries with them. This is normal because as stormy as the teenage years are, they are the best years for people to figure things out for themselves. Except for few who get stuck in their teenage years, most overcome this phase and begin seeing their fathers as they really are. And if they are lucky and their fathers are still around, these sons and daughters can be friends with their dads.

Becoming friends with one's own father is a good place to be, where one can talk openly with him, and laugh or cry with him, and support and be supported by him through the ups and downs of life. Surely, everyone's life journey is different, and for some, a positive relationship with a father can be difficult if not impossible.

Then, fathers themselves are a complex mix of strength and vulnerability, wisdom and mistakes. Sons and daughters need understand that their fathers are people, too, as they see the lines on their fathers' faces and the gray in their hair. So they can realize, being human, fathers, too, are figuring things out as they go along, like the rest of us.

Where the idea of fathers are concerned, we all need to keep in mind that the most important thing is the one constant through it all: the deep love of a father for his child.