The Art of Loving Our Fathers

Ian G. Srrachan.

(Nassau, The Bahamas) I will never forget seeing my father cry for the first time. He came into the house as if walking itself was hard to do and he collapsed on the dusty burgundy couch that leaned against the living room's eastern wall. "He had so much promise." That's all he said.

My eldest brother, Winston had died.

My father's words met with no response. We all just looked at the floor.

It was a side of my father I had never seen before. A side I think I actually had tried to deny he even had.

You see, I come from what is aptly called a "broken home." I wonder who coined that term? Broken Home. God, it says so much. I was three when my father and mother separated so I have absolutely no memory of the life I had when we all lived together in the house on Peardale. In fact, my first memory of my father dates to when I was about 8 and we had moved back to Nassau from North Andros.

Our relationship was never what it ought to have been. You might say I inherited other people's feelings and ideas about my father. I had no view of my own; I accepted everything that was said about him. To put it simply, I kept my distance.

But on that April when Winston died my father came to our house to mourn the first child he ever had. And I had a brief window into the past of the man. If he were alive today, Winston would be 52. My father is 72, so he had his first son when he was 20. "He had so much promise," that's what he said. And he cried there in the dusty sofa while we looked at the floor.

I found it so easy to judge my father when I was a teenager. I found it so easy to disrespect him. But when this terrible thing happened I saw what my father had lost in this world too. I saw what he had lost and could never replace.

Now I am a man, a husband and a father of sons. Now my mother is gone and only my father remains. I look more like him now, than I did in 1996, when Winston died. I see my dad's face when I look in the mirror, not my mother's. I have his head, his shoulders, his build. And I'm old enough now to have made a fool of myself many times, to have broken more than one heart, to have failed people who counted on me. I've lived long enough to have done a whole lot of things I swore I'd never do and to have gone against my own principles more than once. These experiences have given me the humility to forgive my father and the grace to never again judge him as I did when I was just a boy. Now I see him through the lens of my own choices, mistakes and hard fought victories: and I see a man, a proud man, who worked, who loves, who faces the world with painfully-won wisdom and who seeks the face of God.

Now I know the terrible power of fathers, the awesome station they possess. A station no mother can fill, no uncle, no brother, no friend, no spar. I see for myself the incredible sway we have over the little ones, who watch our every move, repeat our every word, learn the world and the way through us. I see my 22 month old son try to put on my size 12 boots, my hat, and try to stuff my cell phone is his pampers, and I realize how responsible I will be for the man he becomes.

Now a light has come on in a dark and cold place. And I realize what I lost. I realize what I never had and I try to recreate myself in my mind's eye; I try to create a me that would have grown up with a father. I know I turned out OK and I know my mother did a hero's work in raising us. But a mother is not a father and can never be. German actress Marlene Dietrich once said, "A king, realizing his incompetence, can either delegate or abdicate his duties. A father can do neither. If only sons could see the paradox, they would understand the dilemma." A weird source for a quote perhaps, but spot on.

I can think of no greater problem in our nation today than the problem of manhood. And I can think of no greater sign of the problem of manhood than the behaviour of fathers in this country. There are few social ills I can think of that are not in some way connected to the fact that so many men today, in and out of the home, are not loving or supporting the women who bear them children, are not loving or disciplining their children, are not being the first good example of what a man is for their sons and their daughters. Today, cowardice masquerades as courage, selfishness parades as wisdom, and falsehood is called wisdom. Today love is weakness, a woman's word, and loyalty and sacrifice are for chumps. There is nothing of Christ in today's notion of manhood.

We must face our fathers and love them, we sons. We must bless our sons and teach them, we fathers. Not teach them how to hurt but how to heal, not how to break but how to mend. If we cannot understand what made our fathers the men they are, we cannot be the fathers we hope to be.

"I always felt like my children were the most beautiful children I'd ever seen." I thank God I lived to hear my father say that, as he stood in that same living room, looking at my son and feeling pride, not sorrow. I might never have known he felt that way about us, so I'm grateful. I'm just getting to know him, really. I've lost so much time.

"Until you have a son of your own... you will never know the joy, the love beyond feeling that resonates in the heart of a father as he looks upon his son. You will never know the sense of honor that makes a man want to be more than he is and to pass something good and hopeful into the hands of his son. And you will never know the heartbreak of the fathers who are haunted by the personal demons that keep them from being the men they want their sons to be." — Kent Nerburn.

Write me at ianstrakan@gmail.com and http://www.ianstrachan.wordpress.com

[Source: The Nassau Guardian]