A wonderfully written article. My understanding definitely changed when I got older and became a father myself. Like you mentioned, it requires us to reach a certain maturity before we can fully grasp the magnitude of what fatherhood means. My dad became a softie when grandkids entered the picture, and I'm sure I'll be same 😁
Yes, we really can't understand our parents until we are older. And sometimes not until they are gone. It sounds like your relationship changed when you had kids, and he changed as well. That's wonderful.
Wow...this was too much for me to fully read. I lost my father very suddenly (from a heart attack) when he was 54 and I was 17, just starting my senior year of high school. I lost my entire world when I lost my father. We were very close, and he was so good to me. I wish I could have known him when he grew old.
oh Joan, I am so sorry. That is the worst time to lose your father. You are too old for another man to take his place and you are on the cusp of adulthood when you need him most. Absolutely devastating. I'm sure you still feel the loss of him today.
No one would ever have taken my father's place, no matter how young I was...Yes, it is still painful, but I sure was lucky to have a great father, and mother, given some of the stories I've heard! (not that my mother was bad, I just felt better when I was with my father.)
I understand. Forgive me, I did not mean your father could be replaced. Of course, he couldn't. Only that when we are younger, it's more possible for another person to step into the archetypal role that guides us out of the home.
I, too, feel incredibly grateful to have had a good father, even though I only had him for 24 years. What he gave me in that short time - like you - has lasted a lifetime.
Oh, I didn't take it that way at all, Jan. I agree that what age one is when one looses a parent matters a lot. I think I would have appreciated it if someone had stepped in to fill that role to a certain extent. I had a lot of good friends and that helped!
Thank you for this, Jan. The Sharon Olds poem is wonderful. I also had a different kind of father. Not, thankfully, a mean, abusive one. But rather a gentle, somewhat cowed man who was not at all larger than life.
Ah. Thank you for sharing. If you're willing to say more, do you feel like he prepared you for the world in any way? Or perhaps, archetypally, the roles of mother and father were reversed in your parents?
I think my father provided a sort of moral compass. Without being ideological or explicitly political, he was ahead of his time in the way he cared about people who were less fortunate. It always moves me when I think of him volunteering to teach English to Spanish-speaking children in my school.
oh wow, that is quite an example! And yes, his volunteering, his caring about people, was a role model for how to be in the world. That's a beautiful gift.
A wonderfully written article. My understanding definitely changed when I got older and became a father myself. Like you mentioned, it requires us to reach a certain maturity before we can fully grasp the magnitude of what fatherhood means. My dad became a softie when grandkids entered the picture, and I'm sure I'll be same 😁
Yes, we really can't understand our parents until we are older. And sometimes not until they are gone. It sounds like your relationship changed when you had kids, and he changed as well. That's wonderful.
Wow...this was too much for me to fully read. I lost my father very suddenly (from a heart attack) when he was 54 and I was 17, just starting my senior year of high school. I lost my entire world when I lost my father. We were very close, and he was so good to me. I wish I could have known him when he grew old.
oh Joan, I am so sorry. That is the worst time to lose your father. You are too old for another man to take his place and you are on the cusp of adulthood when you need him most. Absolutely devastating. I'm sure you still feel the loss of him today.
No one would ever have taken my father's place, no matter how young I was...Yes, it is still painful, but I sure was lucky to have a great father, and mother, given some of the stories I've heard! (not that my mother was bad, I just felt better when I was with my father.)
I understand. Forgive me, I did not mean your father could be replaced. Of course, he couldn't. Only that when we are younger, it's more possible for another person to step into the archetypal role that guides us out of the home.
I, too, feel incredibly grateful to have had a good father, even though I only had him for 24 years. What he gave me in that short time - like you - has lasted a lifetime.
Oh, I didn't take it that way at all, Jan. I agree that what age one is when one looses a parent matters a lot. I think I would have appreciated it if someone had stepped in to fill that role to a certain extent. I had a lot of good friends and that helped!
Thank you for this, Jan. The Sharon Olds poem is wonderful. I also had a different kind of father. Not, thankfully, a mean, abusive one. But rather a gentle, somewhat cowed man who was not at all larger than life.
Ah. Thank you for sharing. If you're willing to say more, do you feel like he prepared you for the world in any way? Or perhaps, archetypally, the roles of mother and father were reversed in your parents?
I think my father provided a sort of moral compass. Without being ideological or explicitly political, he was ahead of his time in the way he cared about people who were less fortunate. It always moves me when I think of him volunteering to teach English to Spanish-speaking children in my school.
oh wow, that is quite an example! And yes, his volunteering, his caring about people, was a role model for how to be in the world. That's a beautiful gift.