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Notes - Email - Serious Rings - Fun Rings The Lighted Path - Design - Host |
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To fathers! This is from AZ Central.com, and the Arizona Republic. It is in regard to Father's Day (obviously), although a bit late. Thank you, fathers who stick around to love and raise your family! What a father does He plays a vital role for kids Jun. 15, 2003 12:00 AM A father doesn't define himself in words but in actions. In what he does. In what he teaches. He is a partner in parenting, involved in practically every decision of child-rearing. He is a responsible breadwinner who doubles as chairman of the leisure time entertainment committee, specializing in roughhouse horseplay. He is the occasional serious disciplinarian: "Don't make me come in there." He is the role model for his sons and a protective cheerleader for his daughters. He is the ATM machine with no minimum balance required. The designated bug killer of the household. And when the teenagers need a designated driver, he's just a cellphone call away. A father is sometimes a mass of contradictions. He loves, but don't expect him to express it in deep, heartfelt words. They don't come easily for him. He's proud when his daughters blossom into young women but gets embarrassed and unhappy when they wear clothes that reveal too much chest, midriff or thigh. "Is there some fabric crisis around here?" he'll cry out in anguish. A father and son share the trickiest of relationships. When they are close, there might not be anything as inspiring on Earth. A mother's love is unconditional, but a father is harder to please. Bertrand Russell said it's because fathers somehow expect children to be a credit to them. Oh, and the joy they can bring. The pride Jollie Willford felt last Thursday at the Marine Reserve Center when he hugged his son, Lance Cpl. Seth Willford, just home from Iraq. The elder Willford had served in the Navy. His son helped lay a 60-mile fuel line in the desert, six times longer than any fuel line in Marine Corps history. Seth, humble, gentle, responsible, learned a lot at his father's side. And so did Scott and Brian Satran, who teach baseball to their sons and scores of other Valley kids every spring and summer, just as their father, Vic, taught them. Fatherhood is not easy. And only now are sociologists catching on to how important fathers are. Now, the scholars worry about the nearly 25 million children who grow up without their fathers at home. The experts should have asked the children. They knew all along how important fathers are.
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