My girls bring me gifts each Father’s Day. I had always wondered why.
I never gave my father any. Not that he ever did a bad job as a father.
In fact, I remember him every day since his passing, for his absolute sense of commitment to fatherhood. He deserved every gift.
Do my children think I deserve a gift for being a good father reason they always give me one each Father’s Day?
In Europe people are taught to give. It is a giving culture. People give at the slightest hint of festivity. They give at valentine’s day, still do not know what that means. They give at Christmas, at
Easter, on birthdays. Halloween, guy Fawkes day …name it.
In a way you seem at odds when you do not give for the reasons the culture in which you live compels you to.
At some point giving begins to look like a reward for everything. Even though I love everything I have been given by my children, who have profoundly good taste, but I also wonder at their culture of stereotype. How they want to give and give…as prescribed! lol
By giving me gifts does that suggests I have been a good father?
In many ways their giving me gifts gives me vicarious pleasure by seeing through their eyes and hearts, their innocent, childlike desire to make their father happy. Bless them!
But deep in me is an unfinished business, a taller dream that is beyond receiving gifts.
Being a good father indeed.
Do they know how to be a father, a good one for that matter, other than what they imagine it to be?
Good or bad they are compelled by virtue of the culture they live in to give me gifts.
What makes a father happy? Being a good father or good at getting gifts?
Perhaps my children do not have half an idea what makes me happy.
And each time they bring me gifts have they ever wondered why I look into their eyes, and I wished they could see my deepest desires, for me to be a good father to them and that after all will not depend on whether they brought me gifts or not?
That would have made me a happy man for the rest of my life. If in the end I was to become the best dad to them, and indeed so!
What is it about a father’ day without the dream of being a great father?
And it is my prayer for the lord to make me one, a great father. And that is about the best gift I would ever hope to receive besides the ones from my dearest daughters.
And this is my wish for every father, to become a great dad.
Happy Father’s Day!
