Father’s Day
Technically and even though it has been celebrated in other forms since the Middle Ages, Father’s Day was first celebrated in the United States on the third Sunday of June in 1910. At 112 years old, the celebratory day still remains three years behind the recognition of Mother’s Day, which began in 1907. But officially, it wasn’t really nationally established until 1968 when President Lyndon Johnson made an official proclamation as to its existence and observation. Mother’s Day got that proclamation and designation in 1914, so officially, Father’s Day is one half the age of Mother’s Day this year (54 versus 108 years old). That is not surprising, when you come to think of it because while there are many examples of fathers being great parents, it would be hard to deny that mothers are far more often drawn to the cause of parenting whether by maternal instinct or the natural goodness of their souls, both of which are very often in evidence and more prevalent than in the masculine gender.
Father’s Day is a very special day for me for reasons quite different than Mother’s Day being a special day. In my case, I owe everything to my mother and have acknowledged that in multiple ways, including the writing of her memoir in a book I titled Mater Gladiatrix. I sing my mother’s praises on many occasions and in many stories, either as the central theme or some peripheral comment. The other night we rewatched The DaVinci Code with Tom Hanks and learned again about the history through time of the sacred feminine, the mother goddess of mankind. The concept of Mother Earth or Mother Nature comes from Greek mythology and the existence of the Goddess Gaia, who supposedly gave birth to nature and therefore, all living things, including her own husband, and thus man himself. That’s a pretty wild notion when you stop and think about it, but the Greeks never felt the need to justify their myths and it stands as a testament to the underlying power of maternity.
When I first wrote down this title, I placed the apostrophe after the s, thinking logically that this was a day that belonged to all fathers. But that is an incorrect spelling. The proper way to write either Father’s Day or Mother’s Day is as the singular possessive. That is not an accident and was established as the convention by Anna Jarvis, the woman who championed the concept of Mother’s Day and felt it should be used for the honoring of every family’s own mother rather than the honoring of the collective of motherhood. This notion was picked up by President Woodrow Wilson when he made the day official in 1914 and it carried over later to the spelling of Father’s Day for the same reason.
If Mother Nature gives birth to us all, then it is Father Time that puts it all to an end. The Greeks had their God Chronos, who was juxtaposed to the Goddess Gaia in that he was the harvester of nature. He is depicted as an old bearded man with a sickle. If Mother Nature is Goddess Earth, Father Time is the Grim Reaper, who personifies death and the logical conclusion of all life. Somewhere along the line that must have seemed too morbid (probably to some man or another) and the symbolism shifted to that of a snake that swallows his own tail and is therefore representative of the eternity of the cycle or circle of life. My thinking is that what the Greeks probably first thought was that mothers give birth and fathers end life and that is their inherent nature. The whole snake thing seems more like a rationalization or some realigned imaging to allow man to feel better about his innate tendencies. Immortality and eternity are more nihilistic than they are realistic.
My own fatherly experience would comport with the Greek mythological roots of these traditions. Very little about my father seems honorable or memorable except as a cautionary tale. He spent his early years in Italy during the Mussolini years. I know little about how he spent his time leading up to and during WWII except the fantastic story he told about refusing to fight the Americans on moralistic grounds. He supposedly was imprisoned and nearly executed on one occasion for his anti-fascist stand, but that seems inconsistent with the next stage of his life. He moved with his family to Venezuela, in what I can only assume was a flight from the association with the man (Benito Mussolini) who hailed from the same region where my father’s family called home. Indeed, my father told the story that his father was a member of Mussolini’s inner circle (another inconsistency with his own story of incarceration).
But once in Venezuela, while my grandfather occupied himself with the banalities of making a living with a grocery store, my father worked diligently to curry favor with Venezuela’s dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez. That would seem to inform his prior relationship towards authoritarianism and Mussolini rather than any pro-American story he told once he had taken on United States citizenship. If it sounds as though I am distrustful of my father, you would be correct. From the age of four, when he left me and my siblings for greener pastures and blonder California beauty, he acted far less like a father than like a man on a mission to be successful at all costs. His decided lack of ethical foundation made that a bumpy road with more downs than ups and as wild a ride as his global traipsing might imply.
It would be wrong of me to ignore the most important and valuable things given to me by my father. The first is a sense of the importance of acceptance and forgiveness. While I speak bluntly of his misadventures, I have never held any grudge against him for whatever he did not do as a father. In fact, over the years on the rare occasions when I was able to interact with him, I did so gladly but without impassioned need. The best words are those borrowed from my mother, I accepted him for who he was and would not deny that he was my one and only father. But the real gift I received from him is the gift that keeps on giving to me and is never forgotten. He gave me the desire, or more accurately, the need, to be a good father to my children.
I believe I have done that to the best of my ability. I too had a less than direct and smooth path to that outcome. I did not stay with any of my children full-time and in the same home, but rather was an absentee parent for all three from an early age. Nevertheless, I assiduously adhered to a rigid and determined schedule of visitation with them all, including many vacations here and abroad to give them as broad a perspective of the world and its possibilities as I could. In many ways, my own life is more defined by my children and the things I have done to keep them close and to show them the world, than anything I have done purely for my own purpose. The travels I have taken and the homes I have created over the years were all in large part influenced by my obligation and love for them. I fully understand that this is my perspective and can only hope that they understand how much I have tried to be a good father to them based on what each has needed of me. Indeed, on this Father’s Day, I am on the verge of setting out on yet again another journey, this time to head East towards gatherings with each of the three. They are what drives me on Father’s Day.