On Fathers
Margaret Stortz

Here’s to fathers, to those who waited anxiously while we were being born, to those who indulged in some distant fling and didn’t even know they were fathers. Here’s to them all anyway. Whether or not they were good and thoughtful parents, they made it possible for us to come into life, and for that alone they deserve some credit. I’ve known a few dads, my own specifically, and the one who made it possible for me to become a mother. On the whole, I’d say they were a pretty good lot.

Taking trips back into memory lane is always a tricky business. For some reason, we tend to go back to sad or hard memories. This does not prove helpful. If we’re thinking about deficient dads, sitting on old, bad memories will not do anything but make a difficult time worse—and  new all over again when it deserves to be left in the halls of memory. If we’re looking into a dad’s casket, good memories may suddenly pop up in a flood of nostalgia. Nice, but a little late. Should have done that one sooner.

My father has been dead for many decades, and he lived at a time when people, including doctors, did not believe in bringing up serious illness to a dying patient. During my father’s last illness, we all knew he was dying, but ostensibly he did not—unless he was fooling us and knew at some inner level. He never said so. The loaded silence among us did not allow us to talk with him, to ask him what he was thinking and feeling or if he was afraid. We could not cry together or comfort one another. We could only wait until his heart suddenly stopped and he just ceased breathing. In those days, we didn’t know any better. Hopefully, we have grown up some since then. Maybe we’ve come to know that some things are better said than unsaid. Dads can’t read our minds, and if there are important things to say, we had better do so. If we have older fathers around, they need to know what we are thinking so that they still have opportunities to continue being the best dads ever or make a good effort at being a better one. If we have young dads among us, it is foolishness to assume they will all live to be old dads. Some don’t, and many exchanges of love can be lost in waiting just a little too long to let them know how important they are. My father had very little education, but he took his family responsibilities very seriously. There was a lot of art in him, and he made beautiful, finely-etched jewelry—for his girls, my mother and me. My father-in-law, another good dad, was a first-generation immigrant to the United States. Not well educated either and always struggling with the language, he could build just about anything, which I later learned was a very European trait. I had a brief but lovely opportunity to have a step father. A dear and graceful man gave my mother’s later life great sweetness, but unfortunately, only for a bare few years. He had no children of his own but he could not have loved my mother’s children more. And let me not forget the two sons who grew up to be fine fathers themselves…and are still at it.

On the whole…a pretty good lot.

Excerpted from Essays on Everything—From the Sublime to the Ridiculous with a Little in Between by Margaret Stortz. This book can be obtained from Amazon.com in either a print or Kindle version.