Men

I’m sitting here watching another video in which men are shown doing one of the most important jobs they will ever be given, being dads. The video inspired me to write something profound and encouraging, but tears are streaming down my face. What the heck? I am given to sarcasm and sardonic wit, easily sliding right into cynicism, so why am I crying? Profundity will have to wait, this requires analysis.

Taking stock, I’m a 55 year old woman, who is weeping while viewing men catch babies before they fall, pull silly faces to get a giggle from their toddlers, dance with daughters, cuddle children, rock them and love them. This 55 year old person, after a lifetime of calculated indifference, finds she hurts, still. How annoying.

I can’t say I have better reasons than others to wallow in a pit of despair over a father. To measure my relationship next to those whose fathers were abusive, I have to admit I did not suffer at the hands of a monstrous father at all. I wouldn’t be able to stand myself if I equated what I experienced with those who have and self pity is distasteful to me. I refuse to let it ooze all over this post.

No. My walk through life was made a bit rougher by the fact that my father discarded his relationship with his own children as casually an outgrown pair of shoes. We no longer fit what he wanted for himself, so, “bye bye babies” Oddly, he went on to raise another woman’s family as his own. It was really fun receiving a glowing letter of praise, after his passing, from a stepsister I never knew. She told me what a wonderful father he had been to her. Maybe he was expiating old sins? Huzzah.

Half a moment though! In the above paragraph I said my life was “a bit rougher”. Now, here’s where self pity, stark truth, and profundity meet in a head on collision. I cannot sound like I was unaffected by his betrayal, without denigrating what is truly profound; loving, present, fathers, give us a foundation we desperately need. I have no foundation under me. The lack of a father wasn’t abuse, per se, but it left me with nothing to stand upon. I’m like a blind man in a world of sight. That’s the lot of all those who are either born without, or lose along the way, what others take for granted.

We cannot see, what others see, and sadly, in our broken world, there are so many more us than there were when I was a child. We are people who stumble through this world never knowing what it is to have the foundation of a fathers love beneath us.

Dads, our world is telling you, you don’t matter. Crazy women are calling what you bring to this world, toxic and dangerous. Please don’t listen. Please care. Don’t father children you can’t or won’t provide with the foundation of your love and your presence, Don’t leave them to blunder through an already hard existence, without you.

This 55 year old woman is still feeling it and it stinks.