Today is special, but only for a few

Jun 21, 2015 Features / Columnists, My Column

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Today is Father’s Day, the day when people the world over will recognize their fathers.  But for some strange reason, even now, one does not get the impression that too many people are actually excited about the day.
And there is good reason. Men for some reason do not seem to attract the kind of adulation that women do. They seem unable to spend quality time with children because for the greater part of the day they are out trying to put food on the table. By the time they get home all they want to do is enjoy a bit of risk and relaxation.
But there are fathers who do everything for their children. They find time to take them, particularly the sons, to sporting events, to go fishing where possible, and even to places where they should have gone with their mothers but for some reason, the good woman could not make it.
As a father I don’t think I was any great shake. Of course I loved my children and I did everything I could do for them. I was not much for hugging and wiping noses, but in my own way I tried to make them see that I loved them.
I remember when my sons were little boys, and I played cricket, I would take them with me. It meant buying little snacks for them during the breaks, and then, if I did well, I would enjoy them talking about something I did. Of course, I was asked whether we could do it again and I always answered in the affirmative. There were many such moments.
They all looked forward to Sundays when we would go swimming. My wife at the time was not too excited with her sons jumping into trenches and pools. The one time she tried to break up our outing almost became a disaster. They howled and petitioned her in a manner that even the People’s Progressive Party could not do to the Guyana Elections Commission.
My daughters were not left out. They were so different from the boys. They enjoyed holding my hand as we walked down the road, talking girl things with me and getting the kind of answers they adored. But the thing I think they enjoyed more than anything else were the sessions in the kitchen.
Even if I may say so myself, I am a good cook. So, when I set out to prepare something they liked and it turned out well, mealtime was enjoyable. I was the person to whom they turned when they felt they were being accosted. In their eyes, I was the baddest dude on the earth. I always made them happy, although I never had to assault any young fellow. In fact, at the end of the altercation, the young man became my friend. My daughters were not happy, but they were never ever accosted by the same boy.
There was a time when I was both mother and father—in fact there were two times. On one occasion their mother had to go to do her stint of national service, so there I was, both mother and father. It worked so well that on one occasion I was heartened to her one of them tell my wife that she actually preferred me.
I was accused of spoiling my children, who all turned out to be mannerly people, and who today are enjoying the accolades of people to whom they reached out.
I wasn’t always pampered on Father’s Day. I never got breakfast in bed, but I did get some special meals. At one time I pretended to love what was prepared, but the truth is that it had some tough scraps of meat that defied my best efforts to chew.
On another occasion I got the first of my pedicures. The presenter was one of my daughters in law. I had never known how good it could be to have the feet soaked and scrubbed. My children could never afford to take me out to lunch or dinner, but what they lacked financially, they made up with big hearts.
Yet where I tried I know men who never made an effort. They were absent, lived their lives as though they were loners. I saw fathers who when approached by their children, refused to give them anything, although the men were there enjoying themselves in some bar or rum shop.
I know men who beat their wives in the presence of their children, men who were so scary that the children were glad to see them out of the house. These are the people who caused so many to put a damper on Father’s Day.
In Guyana we now have a lot of young men who are running about with guns and terrifying hardworking people. When the police do arrest any of these young men they find that they all grew up without fathers. Sociologists now talk about boys growing up without father figures.
Two days ago, a woman came to me with tears in her eyes. Her son had run afoul of the law. He was held with marijuana and according to the woman, since there was no money to pay the arresting ranks, her son is now facing a long time in jail. He is only 20.
There are many young men in the jail who would say that they never had a father. That is an indictment on the role we men play in the lives of our children. But not all of us fall into that category. I wish something magical could happen so that every father could feel special on days like this.
That apart, children always want to know who their fathers are. There was a fellow with whom I grew up at Dem Amstel. I met him at the Cheddi Jagan International Airport where he was waiting for his daughter, a child whom he never supported and whom he had never seen in close to 20 years. But the child was excited. Such is the love of children.
Many years ago when I was Editor-in-Chief at the Chronicle, a woman from the southern United States wrote a letter to the newspaper. Her son was graduating and he wanted to know who his father was. The woman said that she met the man when they were students at Tuskegee University. She became pregnant and disappeared. The man never knew that he had a son.
For her part, she did not want to break up his marriage, but she wanted to please her son. I don’t know how that story ended. The boy must be kicking forty these days and I hope that he did find his father. In these days of social media it must have been possible.

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