Today some of us will be sorry

Jun 19, 2011 Features / Columnists, My Column

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Many men are going to wake up this morning, if they have not already, and find that today is no different from yesterday or the days before. They are not going to find anything special, unless they take themselves to some restaurant waiting to capitalise on their pockets.
A large number are going to find themselves on the pavements as street dwellers and there will always be those who couldn’t care less once they get some alcohol into their systems.
This does not mean that there will not be those fathers who will be pampered—and by this, I do not mean that people would be placing pampers on them. These few lucky fathers would receive gifts from their children and their wives, be advised to take it easy and of course, get a chance to show how much they love their families.
If the truth be told, fathers are never special, not even when they shell out tons of money to already spoilt children. They are the people who would bring in the money and put food on the table but more often than not, they are not the people to sit and cuddle their children and make them recognize that like a mother, a father can actually make a home a place of joy and togetherness.
I remember talking to Dr Steve Surujbally about the role of men in the society and he gave me a very profound answer. He told me that men are naturally hunters who are never satisfied with one kill. Simply put, men pursue life in four stages—hunt and pursue, capture, conquer then flee.
If this is really what operates then small wonder that many of us are now wondering why there is no one to pamper us.
I know that men are really making themselves scarce, because they believe that there are some things that they should not do. Many do not openly show love because to do so would be to demonstrate weakness. However, we are weak. We get a fever and we are reduced to crying babies; we hit our toe and we yell blue murder.
Many of us cannot take the time to change a baby’s nappy because we tell ourselves that we are not cut out to do that. At the first sign of some mess we scream for the mother and we hold the baby a distance away. But later in life we expect that child to treat us special on this day.
Every day I pass by the Georgetown Prisons and I see a gaggle of women waiting to take meals for the inmates, many of whom are spouses or children. The men simply cannot take the time. In fact, they are the people who would be among the first to let an errant child go his way.
I look at the schools and I scarcely see male teachers. This is a far cry from my days at school. Men were there to see us go right. And when we felt our oats the men were there to slap us down.
Even the custodians in the prisons are women. Not so long ago, the women were the secretaries and clerks.
The preponderance of single-parent households headed by women also tells a story. Edith Clarke wrote a most remarkable book— “My mother who fathered me”. That was a most remarkable story told by a woman. In Guyana there are many, both men and women, who could empathise with that story.
Indeed, rarely would one be able to read a book entitled “My father who mothered me”. That is because for some strange reason we do not see fathers as mothers. That would be to render him a sissy.
Yet we do not mind being sissies on days like today. We really want someone to fuss over us but for that to happen we need to do the groundwork. But we do not. We want but we do not give enough.
Just the other day the stores were full of things for mothers. People actually went crazy, with some of them taking it to the extremes. There were those who went to the gravesite and did some cleaning and even painting. I saw one case of this and I wondered at the kind of love they showed during the lifetime of the woman whom they now tried to honour and who cared less about the ministrations.
There is more to the fact why we are ignored. Many of us do not accept certain jobs anymore because we claim that it does not pay. But even worse, many of us refuse to accept basic education that would allow us to take our rightful place in the society, so by the time we are at the age when we could be fathers we are fit for precious little.
We resort to a life of crime and we try to buy love. There are women who would accept our gifts but run when things go wrong, leaving us to spend days like today moping and wondering where we went wrong.
Indeed, there will be some of us who will be working because each day we find it increasingly difficult to provide for our families because there are some of us who do try to keep the family together.
Whatever the case, today is our day. It is a day when some of us will have time to reflect on where we went wrong to be in this lonely state and when some of us will look back and say, “I am happy that I was a good father when it mattered.”

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