Father’s Day Thoughts

by Mark Newell in Holidays, June 5, 2009

This is a collection of quotes and humor about fatherhood to celebrate USA Father’s Day or Fathers and our love for them. This could go in religion, creative writing, society, general, domestic, women: which do I choose?

“Blessed indeed is the man who hears many gentle voices calling him father!”2 Lydia M. Child
“A wise son maketh a glad father” Proverbs 10:1
(A father overheard in the kitchen): “I’m hungry. I must meal. Apple me”1 Warner Brothers Animaniacs cartoon

Fathering is about wisdom and the lack thereof. Archie Bunker of “All in The Family” said it best when he said “One man’s goose is another man’s dander”1. William Shakespeare wrote “it is a wise father that knows his own child (within his home and within himself)2” because, if for nothing else, a father’s bumbling can provide relatability if not simple comic relief. In that light George Bernard Shaw remembered, “My father must have had some elementary education for he could read and write and keep accounts inaccurately”1.

Sometimes fatherhood is hard. One father, shown on the TV show “the Big Bang Theory”, said “Oh nothing…just rethinking my whole life”1. Many dads relate to the dad who said on the TV show “Cheers”, “It’s a dog eat dog world and I’m wearing milkbone underwear”1. Providing for the family is one stress after another as evidenced by this saying, “A father is a guy who has snapshots in his wallet where his money used to be”2. And that’s not the only “used to be” many fathers feel: they feel that freedom is gone, youth is gone, and adventure is gone too. Is the sacrifice worth it?

Let me quote Mario Cuomo about his dad. He wrote, “I watched a small man with thick calluses on both hands work fifteen and sixteen hours a day. I saw him once literally bleed from the bottoms of his feet, a man who came here uneducated, alone, unable to speak the language, who taught me all I needed to know about faith and hard work by the simple eloquence of his example” 2. Believe it or not Dads, we all mean if we don’t say, “thanks”. Thanks for what you did, and what you didn’t do; thanks for what you tried, and what you didn’t try; for there but by the grace of God go I.