a very touching article I found
FATHER FORGETS
W. Livingston Larned
Listen, son: I am saying this as you lie
asleep, one little paw crumpled under your cheek and the blond curls stickily
wet on your damp forehead. I have stolen into your room alone. Just a few minutes ago, as I sat reading my
paper in the library, a stifling wave of remorse swept over me. Guiltily I came
to your bedside.
There are the things I was thinking, son: I
had been cross to you. I scolded you as you were dressing for school because
you gave your face merely a dab with a towel. I took you to task for not
cleaning your shoes. I called out angrily when you threw some of your things on
the floor.
At breakfast I found fault, too. You
spilled things. You gulped down your food. You put your elbows on the table. You
spread butter too thick on your bread. And as you started off to play and I
made for my train, you turned and waved a hand and called, "Goodbye, Daddy!"
and I frowned, and said in reply, "Hold your shoulders back!"
Then
it began all over again in the late afternoon. As I came up the road I spied
you, down
on your knees, playing marbles. There were holes in your stockings. I
humiliated you
before your boyfriends by marching you ahead of me to the house. Stockings were expensive-and
if you had to buy them you would be more careful! Imagine that, son, from a
father!
Do you remember, later, when I was reading
in the library, how you came in timidly, with a sort of hurt look in your eyes?
When I glanced up over my paper, impatient at the interruption,
you hesitated at the door. "What is it you want?" I snapped. You said
nothing, but ran across in one tempestuous plunge, and threw your arms around
my neck and kissed me, and your small arms tightened with an affection that God
had set blooming in your heart and which even neglect could not wither. And
then you were gone, pattering up the stairs.
Well, son, it was shortly afterwards that
my paper slipped from my hands and a terrible sickening fear came over me. What
has habit been doing to me? The habit of finding fault, of reprimanding-this was
my reward to you for being a boy. It was not that I did not love you; it was that I expected too much of
youth. I was measuring you by the yardstick of my own years.
And there was so much that was good and fine
and true in your character. The little heart of you was as big as the dawn
itself over the wide hills. This was shown by your spontaneous
impulse to rush in and kiss me good night. Nothing else matters tonight,son.
I have come to your bedside in the darkness, and I have knelt there, ashamed!
It is feeble atonement; I know you
would not understand these things if I told them to you during your waking
hours. But tomorrow I will be a real daddy! I will chum with you, and suffer when you suffer, and laugh when you
laugh. I will bite my tongue when impatient words come. I will keep saying as
if it were a ritual: "He is nothing but a boy-a little boy!"
I am afraid I have visualised you as a
man. Yet as I see you now, son, crumpled and weary in your cot, I see that you
are still a baby. Yesterday you were in your mother's arms, your head on her
shoulder. I have asked too much, too much, yet given too little of myself.
Promise me, as I teach you to have the manners of a man, that you will remind me
how to have the loving spirit of a child.
good!
ReplyDelete