Fathers' Day Service 2004

Last Sunday's Father's Day service included a variety of poignant spoken and written testimonials about fathers, being fathers, and being a grandfather authored or spoken by persons from a number of generations. I believe that you will enjoy reading these testimonials if you did not attend last Sunday, and will enjoy reading them again if you were there. In the words of one member: "it is always special when members open up and share themselves." - Tom Reed

About My Father, Being a Father, and Being A Grandfather

About My Father - I’m Extra Lucky…

I’m extra lucky because I get to have two Dads. I didn’t always think that I was so lucky. My Mom and Dad got a divorce when I was just a little baby – 9 months old. My Mom married my Step-Dad when I was two years old. I don’t remember life without having two Dads.

I live with my little brother, my Mom and my Step-Dad -but he’s not he really like a Step-Dad to me at all – he is like my Dad. I even call him “Dad” or “Daddy”. One of my favorite memories is when he used to pick me up at nursery school on Tuesdays and we would walk through West Hartford Center. We would always go to Luna Pizza and have the same waitress. She still remembers me and calls me “sweetheart” whenever we go there.

My other Dad is married and I have three younger step sisters. They are really sweet. I like to go their house and play with them. Even though he has three other kids, he always lets me know that I am very special to him. He calls me every night and wants to hear about my day.

Having two Dads is really neat – sometimes it’s complicated, but mostly it’s just twice as much love. - Ginger Furey

Being A Father….

Our younger daughter Kathryn's wedding day was the best day of my adult life. There was nostalgia; there was the unqualified joy on Kathryn's face; and there was the inner satisfaction that my emotional support had made some difference. I had resolved to hold back the tears (at least until I had finished walked Kathryn down the aisle), but it was all over once the rendition of "Sunrise, Sunset" began. I must "confess" to being the kind of Dad who had to learn a lot from trial and error. It took me more than a few years to get it right. I gradually realized that the best gifts I can give our daughters is respect and trust of their intuitive judgments and decisions. Sometimes the intuitive judgments and decisions go awry, but there is no better way.

In Kathryn's case, I accordingly learned to listen and to smile. I had no questions when Kathryn

and Jim got engaged after 10 weeks - and it all worked out great!

Happy Father's Day to all Dads who work hard to get it right.
- Mike Winterfield

Being a father ....

My daughter, six years old, like a flower beginning to bloom, teaches me about cherishing life.

Caroline is singing, “He Lives in Me,” from the Lion King. If you know the Broadway version, you know this song.. Simba is singing about his father, long dead. Caroline is singing with dramatic abandon. The budding performer.

When the song is over, she walks over to me, sits next to me, kisses my cheek, and whispers in my ear.

She says;

“I’m going to sing that song when you are dead.” - Chris K

Being A Grandfather….

When my children were born (I have three sons, now ranging from 28 to 35), I was surprised at the intensity of my parental instincts. Little did I realize that I would also have strong grand-parental instincts. When I first held my first grandson Donald, now 14 months old, I felt a sense of peace and calm, of things being right-with-the-world and of the continuation of life (even my life) going on into the future. It was both an emotional and philosophical moment because at the same time I wondered and contemplated what his life will hold. After all, it is possible that he might live until the year 2100.

Many of the changes we’ve looked forward to and the fears we’ve thought about are likely to be realized in his lifetime. And I felt loving, proud and protective all at the same time. Now I have a second grandson Arlo, 6 months, and my feelings for him are the same. I look forward to watching them grow to become whatever they will be, and to helping them along the way as I can. - Bruce Robbins

Four Letter Word

My father was the king
of crossword puzzles.
Every weeknight
he’d come home from work
covered in grease and engine grime.
After a quick shower
the first thing he’d do
was the evening paper’s puzzle,
in the time it took my mother and I
to put dinner on the table.
It was an obsession.
My father always did
the crossword puzzle in pen,
never questioning
once a square was filled.
He parented in much the same way –
once spoken
no taking back.
No need to check tomorrow
for today's answers.
He was that sure.
Back then
a morning newspaper was also delivered.
He’d do that puzzle
in the bathroom before work.
Practically the entire page
checkered with puzzle,
across and down clues
squeezed in underneath.
And on the facing page
along with Dear Abby
was the cryptogram and word jumble
he’d save for me.
As a young girl
he taught me the art of hidden meaning,
a love of words and language
that spills over and floods
my life as a poet.
Some of my best memories
are coming home from church,
my father still in bed
propped up on pillows,
large and invincible.
I’d bring him a fresh cup of coffee
balanced on a beat up tray
and he’d give me the cryptogram.
Climbing up beside him
I’d huddle until Sunday dinner –
knees bent beneath me
chin in hand
chewing the pen cap
while I worked through patterns and clues
the way he taught me.
The other day I’m on a subway in NYC.
The young man beside me
tentatively doing the Times crossword,
using a pencil and eraser.
Furtively I watch as he struggles
with 10 down,
eraser dust all over his black Armani suit.
A four-letter word
beginning with L –
many definitions,
all inadequate. - ( c ) Elizabeth T

Pulpit Testimonial

When Terasa asked me to share a few reflections on fatherhood, I initially thought that it would be no problem to come up with a few pithy comments. After all, I have been at this fatherhood business long enough; the oldest of my five children is just a month shy of his 25th birthday. And, with Maya’s recent arrival, it seems I will be at it for quite a while longer. Please understand that I haven’t had much trouble resurrecting the notion of getting down on the floor and playing with a little kid. What has changed is getting back up off the floor; that’s gotten a bit dicey. You should see the geriatric version of ring-around-the-rosy that we have devised. It’s a combination of musical chairs and ring-around-the-rosy; chair being the operative word. Perhaps it is a good thing that I will be in the father role for some years to come; I need more time to figure this out.

Any consideration of fatherhood for me necessarily begins with my own father and his father before him and so on back through the generations. There are some pretty strong male traditions in my family. One of my fondest memories from childhood is when my father, grandfather, and great uncle began taking me on their hunting trips when I was about 10 years old. Though I have no continuing interest in hunting, those were very important experiences for me. My father was an extremely devoted father and a very reliable provider. When I had mid-week athletic events in junior high school, he often was the only parent on hand. But, between his five children and my mother, especially my mother, my father was way over his head. In fact, that is pretty much where he lived, up inside his head. At some point his lack of emotional availability became a problem for me, and I vowed to do it differently when my turn came. Well, I was not very many years into fatherhood when I realized through some pretty unpleasant circumstances of my own creation that I was doing it exactly the way my father had. At that point I realized it was going to more than a vow for me to do things differently; it was going to take some real work. The mixed-bag results are something that I will return to in a few minutes.

It is impossible for me to think about my role as a father in isolation. Sue, in her role as a mother and a spouse, is always part of the picture. Even for single or adoptive parents, your relationship with your child is always imbedded in a larger context. The birth parent or parents always become part of the equation at some point. My son, Will, taught me something very important about this triangle of three relationships, which is that my role as a father is even more dependent on my relationship with Sue than it is on my relationship with the kids. He taught us this in a very touching and tangible way when he was only two years old. At the time we lived in the suburbs of Washington, DC. Sue and I would drop him off at day care on our way into work downtown. We both felt a bit guilty about leaving him in day care as much as we did, and, as a result, getting from him that last reassuring hug was very important. Well, that’s not what he cared about. What he wanted to know is that we were all right with each other. He would physically push us together, and once he saw us hugging, he just knew that the world was okay, and he could turn on his heels and head off into the bowels of the day care center to find his little buddies. It was at that point that I realized how much kids feed off the relationship between their parents, and it also was my first inkling that being a father may be the most important thing that I ever do.

I have also been thinking about the differences between motherhood and fatherhood. Birth mothers, it seems to me, have the advantage of the intense physical relationship with the child before and after birth. Fathers, and adoptive parents, have to develop that closeness by some other means. I wonder if the traditional response of fathers to this disadvantage has been to abdicate any role in the emotional aspects of child rearing and adopt some other role, like hunter-gatherer, or yardman, or purveyor of the barbeque. I don’t know if my generation was the first, but I do know that my peers and I wanted something more in terms of an emotional connection with our children, we wanted something that the moms seemed to naturally get. Actually achieving some degree of emotional connection to my children, being emotionally available to them, was something for which I had no guidebook, no role model. I blundered ahead, believing on faith that there had to be some emotional payoff to changing all those poopy diapers.

Given my history, being emotional in tune with and emotionally available to my children always requires work, and it never feels natural. As I noted earlier, the results have been mixed. But, I have come to realize that the mere making of the effort has had important results. When I see the level of self-awareness and the level of self-control that my children have achieved in their own lives, when I see how well they treat other people, I get the sense that maybe my efforts have made a difference in their lives, even if my efforts haven’t made much difference in my life. Perhaps, by openly and continually struggling to address the issues in my life, they might be inspired to so the same for themselves when the time comes. What I do in my lifetime, what I accomplish with my life will soon be forgotten. What will live on are the choices that the kids make about their lives. The early returns suggest that they will make better choices than I made, and, because of the way these things work, their good choices will in turn inspire the good choices of their children and so on through the generations. That is a legacy about which I can be pretty happy, and it is why being a father is the most important thing that I will ever do. I fancy this to be one dad’s contribution to the evolution of our species.

Have a great day, dads. - Charles Huntington

Let us know of any comments, errors and corrections - thanks (revised 2/21/05)