Father's Day

Another Father's Day has passed. We dads get only a tiny amount of recognition when compared to the lavish praise a mom receives on Mother's Day. It's unfair, but society has always discouraged the show of affection toward the male "animal". Even I, who treasures fatherhood above all else I have ever done or ever will achieve in my life make little of Father's Day, only a "Happy Father's Day" or card from Jane is enough to make me feel good.
I adored my dad and he me. It is with that notion that I set out to be as good to my daughter as I could, to devote my self to seeing her happier and better off than I. It's what my dad did for me and is ti not the responsibility of every dad to try to reach to the level of his own or, if by some miracle, to be an even better dad to his child? I think so. I am defined by fatherhood , just as my dad was.Maybe that's why I am more like my dad now than ever. In fact, I move closer to his own profile with day I live. I am my father's double colliding with my ambition to be some kind of original. Maybe that's good, to take from my own dad and to inject my own parenting style. "The child is the father of the man", said the poet William Wordsworth. What my daughter is when young is largely what she will be when older. That's reason enough to try to be a good dad, and is there any other more rewarding life than that of "the good dad".
Because my dad was attentive, patient, loving, understanding, funny and all the rest of what good dads do, I have been the same with Jane. Yet now she is a teen, the age of discontent...err...maybe "disinterest" is a better term...in one's parents. Especially on Father's Day I recognize the teen phase of alienation and contentedly wait for Jane to return to my flock. And when she does return, I will long to hear the words every father hears perfunctorily uttered more by obligation than feel at Father's Day. "I'm lucky to have had you as my dad." I'll know for sure then that I was a good dad.