Fathers

I've not had much luck in my lifetime with Fathers. Not my own, and not the one who fathered my children.

I don't know why that is exactly. The luck of the draw, something I did, I'm not sure. My own father never abused me, nor did he leave us, he just wasn't all that into me. He was obsessed with my mother. I was just something he decided my mother needed to try and keep her happy and tied to him. It didn't work, she divorced him anyway. I guess he loved me in his own way, he had his own issues, but not like I knew a father's love was suppose to be.

By the time they divorced I was a teenager and though I still tried to have a relationship with him, any contact he had with me was only an attempt to get close to my mother.

Not until a few years later, when he was dying was he really interested in wanting to see me and meeting the children that were his grandchildren. To me that was too little too late and I chose to remain estranged from him. By then he had hurt me so many times with his disinterest in my life, I just couldn't seem to pretend that he was not just my father in name only. After he died, when mine and my children's hearts were safe from any pain he could have caused us, I went to his grave and made peace with him. Maybe too late for him but not for me.

The man I married had no role model himself as a father. Living with an abusive and alcoholic father, he never really understood what his own role was when we had children. He could play with them, but if I needed to depend on him to help me make decisions about them, if I needed him to discipline them, if I just needed him to pick them up from school or to take them to ball practice, forget it! When our marriage broke up, he divorced his sons too.

I've often wondered what it must feel like to have been raised with a father who cared or to have the father of your children actually take an active part in the kid's lives. I know there are fathers like that out there in the world.
And I've witnessed first hand how not having a father in your life can hurt.

With all that said,one can understand how very proud of my son I am. His parenting skills amaze me. He is the father that he deserved as a child and he is the father I'd have loved to have had. My granddaughter's childhood will be so much richer because of his presence in it. And she'll know what it feels like to be "Daddy's girl".

"Happy Father's Day", Son. I know you are just doing what comes naturally to you, what a father does out of love, and I know it's not anything you feel you should be rewarded for. It's the way it is suppose to be. But I want you to know Father's Day is for Dads like you. I'm proud to be your mother.