Fatherhood

I was born the day before Father’s Day 32 years ago — a first­born child. And, because of that, I guess I was the first Father’s Day gift my dad received.

Fatherhood is funny thing. It turns a man who is well-​​respected at work, con­sid­ered to be intel­li­gent by his col­leagues and clever by his friends into a com­plete idiot. Tim Russert, Mark Twain and Charles Wadsworth have all com­mented on this phe­nom­e­non. Twain’s quote is my favorite – “When I was a boy of four­teen, my father was so igno­rant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-​​one, I was aston­ished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”

I’m not a father yet, but I’m already begin­ning to see that mine isn’t nearly as stu­pid as he used to be. It’s just like Tim Russert said — “The older I get, the smarter my father seems to get.” I fully believe Charles Wadsworth’s pre­dic­tion will come true for me – “By the time a man real­izes that maybe his father was right, he usu­ally has a son who thinks he’s wrong.”

That’s OK though. I’ll have the wis­dom, strength and legacy of my own father to back me up when my kids roll their eyes at my utter incom­pe­tence. I imag­ine I’ll have to hold back a chuckle as I remem­ber what a moron my dad was when I was my kids’ age.

Every year, on my birth­day, my Dad writes me a let­ter. The one he wrote on my 30^th birth­day was espe­cially touch­ing; and I can’t think of any­thing more fit­ting than to include a few of his thoughts as I close this post.

He wrote, “The rela­tion­ship of a father and his son is like iron sharp­en­ing iron. Sparks may fly and talks get heated and ideas fleshed out, but, in the end, the father wears the honor of gray hairs and the son the legacy of his father’s heart.”