"ON FATHERS"

 “ON FATHERS”

This time last year I was beginning a manuscript on my mother and me and her raising me as a single mom in the land of white, male supremacy in the 1940’s and 1950’s.  She went on this journey because my father abandoned my family when I was a small baby, and I never met him again until I was 24, and then only for a brief moment.  I have just completed that manuscript, and I am now looking for a publisher – the tentative title is “Mother and Me:  A Memoir of Agency, Race, and Gender.”  All this is to say that I have no trouble with Mother’s Day, though I understand why so many people do.  My problem comes with Father’s Day.

I grew up feeling a deep sense of anxiety about my father’s absence in my life, but a bigger problem for me was the sense of abandonment.  My father never contacted me, never came to see me.  Our meeting in 1971 was accidental, but that is a story for another time.  As a boy, I was always wondering why my father never contacted me, why he never acknowledged me.  I internalized a sense that his absence and his refusal to contact me was my responsibility:  I was simply not good enough to be acknowledged as his son.  Fortunately for me, my mother and other people filled in the breech, and I began to hear that while my father might not acknowledge me, God and many others did.  I am grateful especially to my mother for stepping into the gap, and I am grateful to all those men and women who stepped up to help me hear that I was somebody.  On this Father’s Day, I say “Thank You!”

Because I was unsure of my status as a father’s son, I was hesitant, even scared, of becoming a father.  Caroline wanted to have children, but I was much more hesitant.  How could I be a good father when I had no models of being a father? How could I do it when my feelings for my own father were so ambivalent:  longing for him, knowing that he was never coming, hating him for his abandonment, blaming myself for his absence.  She reminded me that because of my mother’s dedication to me, because of my own work in therapy, and because of so many people who had stepped up to father me, that I had become a fine man: strong, compassionate, loving, responsible.  And, of course, I enjoyed the activity which led to the creation of children!  So, we set out on the adventure of trying to get pregnant.  We were one of the early pioneers in women’s waiting until later to have children.  After many fits and starts, we had our first child David in 1980 when Caroline 33 years old.  Then Susan came along 30 months later.

And, what gifts they have been to us!  I have learned so much about fathering from being a father.  In a great surprise to me, I have also received gifts as a son by being a father to our children.  It is a great irony to me that I have received some of the blessings that I needed as a son from fathering our children, and I am so grateful to Caroline, David, and Susan for enabling that in my journey.  I have learned that while I had a biological father, it took a whole village, including my own children, to bring me the blessings that I needed as a son abandoned by my biological father. 

So, in this time of celebrating fathers, I’ll offer some humble advice about the gift and the task of fathering.  First, I was raised by a loving and powerful single woman, but fathers are absolutely necessary in the raising of children.  This is not a slap at my mother or at any of those many women (single or otherwise) who are raising children without a father around.  This is a reflection of a son with a powerful and good mother, who still experienced that large absence.  To all those biological fathers who have stayed and raised and loved their children, I say “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”  Thank you for showing children what a man is meant to be:  loving, nurturing, protecting, challenging, simply being present.

    Second,  to all those biological fathers out there, be sure that you complete the biological process of fathering and become a “daddy” to your children.  For most of my youngish life, my perception was that my father simply chose not to contact me.  While I still think that is the case, in working on the memoir on my mother, I have to come to understand that my mother may not have been inviting to my father, that he may have wanted to come to see me but was hesitant because of my mother.  I don’t know what the truth is, but as the son on the receiving end of an absent father, if you are divorced or absent from your children, make sure that they know that you love them, no matter how complex it is or how big the obstacles are.

    Finally, to all those adults, whatever your status may be, please step into the breech with the children in your families and communities.  Even in nuclear families that seem to do well, it takes a village to raise our children, to be fathers and mothers to so many children who feel abandoned and lost because of the destructive forces in this world.  I had many fathers and mothers who stepped into the breech, so on this Father’s Day, let us give thanks for our fathers who loved us, let us be part of that village of people who helped to raise us.  Let us step into the breech.  It made so much difference my life, and I have tried to pass it forward.  Let us all seek to be fathers one to the other.