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Fathers and sons.
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| Fathers Day |
The image conjures up a picture of an America long past, a Norman Rockwell painting of Dad teaching his boy how to play baseball. or how to build a model airplane, or how to catch a fish.
It's an American dream a lot of kids can only wish they lived, especially in an era in which ever-increasing numbers of children grow up in single-parent homes.
Some kids never know their fathers. To others, Dad is a weekend warrior. Dad means trips to the zoo, or to the ballgame, or to the circus. He's not an everyday figure who helps guide them as they stretch toward adulthood and maturity.
We live in an increasingly matriarchal society. It's a fact that stems from the burgeoning numbers of unwed mothers and a divorce rate that reached epidemic proportions a long time ago.
Fathers are an endangered species, which is why honoring the good ones only one day out of the year seems somehow inadequate.
I never knew my biological father. All he gave me were his genes before skipping out on my mother, my sister and me when I was 2 years old.. The only thing I have to know him by is a wedding picture. It tells me I got his looks, something I've always considered a dubious gift at best.
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| 1962 |
For four years, long before it was fashionable, I was part of a single-parent household. I spent my days in a pre-school before the days of day care centers.
Then, when I was 6, my mother remarried. For 31 years since then, my stepfather has been the only father I've ever known. He and my mother raised me, did their best to give me good values and helped me deal with life's disappointments.
When I was younger, I used to fantasize about my biological father. I used to dream of adventures he must be having. I thought someday he would come back to see his son. I thought we would be pirates together.
Somewhere along the line I realized he wasn't a figure to be romanticized. He was just a guy who couldn't cope with the responsibilities of day-to-day life and decided to duck out on them.
In every sense of the word but one, the man who raised me is my father.
He taught me to play sports. He took me places. He helped educate me. Most important, though, he taught me the value of family.
Lots of men live their lives for themselves. The buy big, flashy cars. They were expensive suits. They put themselves first, and their wives and children get what's left.
Before he married my mother, my dad played in bowling leagues and on baseball teams. He played golf with his friends.
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| Father and sons, 2006 |
Once he became a family man, though, all that ended. He dropped everything and didn't include his wife and children. He almost had to be forced to spend money on himself. He never bought a new car. He never wore a tailored suit.
His golf clubs gathered dust in the basement until I took them out and played two or three times when I was 19. The last time I used them, I left his 7-iron on a fairway somewhere.
I seriously doubt he's ever noticed it was gone. Once I lost interest and stopped using the clubs, they started catching dust again.
I have always been thankful my father was born too soon to be part of the "Me Generation." He has always put his family first. Any time any of us have ever needed him, he has been there.
My father always wanted to write. His closest friend in college was a man who has become one of the top writers in the country. He has had books on the New York Times best-seller list and he was nominated for an Academy Award for a screenplay he wrote.
He told me my dad could have been a great writer.
He never had the chance, though. When you marry into an instant family and then add three more kids of your own, you can't play the starving writer. You've got to have paychecks coming in regularly.
I think he takes pride in the fact that one of his five children makes a living with words. Every time I write about any subject, I honor him. This is the first time I have ever written about him.
I don't have any children of my own. If I'm ever fortunate enough to be a father, I hope I can be half as good to my children as he has been to me.
A lot of kids say their dads are their heroes when they're growing up. Some of them outgrow it.
I didn't. I'm 37 years old, and my father, Norman Rappaport, is still the finest man I've ever known.
Happy Fathers Day, Dad, to you and to all of the other fathers who put their families ahead of themselves,
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Of course that was a long time ago. Five and a half years later and a thousand miles from Greeley, I became a father and my Dad became a grandfather. He lived long enough to see both of my children graduate from college, and he saw my daughter Pauline qualify for the Foreign Service and attended her wedding in August 2006 in Pasadena, California.
He died in March 2008, six months before his first great-grandchild would be born. It saddens me that he never had the chance to know my grandchildren -- Madison, Lexington and Albanie -- but then none of us live forever. Madison will be 8 this September and if she has her first child at the same age her mother had her, I would have to live into my late 80s.
He and I have been different sorts of fathers to our children, but I don't say that to downgrade him or puff myself up in any way. Indeed, I have been blessed by the lack of difficulties my two children have had. God only knows what my abilities as a father would have been had I had to be a dad to a child like me.
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