Mother’s and Father’s Days have a marketing allure that is only matched by realities of disappointment in the real world. For all the mass hysteria of expectation generated by these halcyon days, by far and away the most probable outcome is disappointment. Such is life, you might be heard to say.
No, worse. For so many, these days are atrocious. I know there were years when after such days, as a separated father who desperately missed his kids, that I would sob inconsolably for hours after returning my daughters home to their mother. I knew it was right that they go back home, that they were generally okay, but I just missed them terribly. It only got a little better when I married again. But at least I had someone to cry with.
Father’s and Mother’s Days remind me more of grief than of ecstatic enjoyment the marketing gurus would have us buy. These days remind me more of what is wrong, exhausting, hard and difficult about family, than of bliss, and this worldview is supported through a broader experience than merely my own.
The man who wants his kids but is refused them, the woman who wants her kids’ father around, the man who won’t have a bar of his kids, the woman who refuses her kids’ father access to them, and so many more impossible situations are on my heart right now.
If a father wants his kids, and he’s prepared to devote his life to their wellbeing, he’s got his priorities right. If he’s alienated, he must dig deeply within. It may be beyond his present will, but if he wants them, he will do whatever it takes to earn his way back into their lives. He can’t demand respect, but he can win it. It’s worth the hard graft.
Likewise, for the woman who wants her kids’ father around; she may have no recourse to that desire, but she can work toward a life where a significant male role model can sow into her family’s life. She believes in her children that much that she believes in faith that a solid male role model is worth hoping for, not that she can’t be an effective role model herself. I’ve always maintained that one loving parent is enough, and infinitely enough as compared with no parental love—especially if there are two parents but no love.
The man who doesn’t want a bar of his kids is a fool. If there is ever a day when he’ll honestly face his reality, he will face scorn and regret. It’s the same for the mother who could have her kids’ father around, but won’t, because he won’t be manipulated, and she can’t bear over him the control she desires to inflict. If only she could be honest, she’d face a world of sorrow and regret for what her kids are missing out on. There will come a day when it is all too late.
There are cases of abuse that preclude certain parents’ access. These, however, while they do happen, are not the norm. If the father loses his kids because he lacks respect for his former partner—the mother of his children—however, then he’s got a decision to make as a man. Is he going to learn some humility or insist that he remain a child? Every day wasted is a day wasted, but it’s also a day where his children will only see despicability in their father.
There’s so much grief in families, and children bear the brunt of it. Where fathers are estranged, it’s heartbreaking where they would be part of their children’s lives for their betterment. But children who have been deserted by their fathers are understood when they’re envious of children whose fathers are active in their lives. If a woman denies her children’s father with no good reason, she brings grief on her entire family. These and many other situations cause an alienation of soul and spirit and that bleeds its way all the way through to the soul.
We ought to always seek ways that the alienation of human beings be avoided. It rots not only one human’s soul, it rots entire families.
Photo by Paola Chaaya on Unsplash
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