A piece from "FATHER FORGETS" - W. Livingston Larned
Listen, son: I am saying this as you lie
asleep, one little
paw crumpled under your cheek and the blond
curls stickily
wet on your damp forehead. I have stolen into
your room
alone. Just a few minutes ago, as I sat reading
my paper
in the library, a stifling wave of remorse
swept over me.
Guiltily I came to your bedside.
There are the things I was thinking, son: I had
been cross
to you. I scolded you as you were dressing for
school because
you gave your face merely a dab with a towel. I
took
you to task for not cleaning your shoes. I
called out angrily
when you threw some of your things on the
floor.
At breakfast I found fault, too. You spilled
things. You
gulped down your food. You put your elbows on
the table.
You spread butter too thick on your bread. And
as you
started off to play and I made for my train,
you turned
and waved a hand and called, “Goodbye, Daddy!”
and
I frowned, and said in reply, “Hold your
shoulders
back!”
Then it began all over again in the late
afternoon. As I
came up the road I spied you, down on your
knees, playing
marbles. There were holes in your stockings. I
humiliated
you before your boyfriends by marching you
ahead of me to
the house. Stockings were expensive - and if
you had to
buy them you would be more careful! Imagine
that, son,
from a father!
Do you remember, later, when I was reading in
the library,
how you came in timidly, with a sort of hurt
look in
your eyes? When I glanced up over my paper,
impatient at
the interruption, you hesitated at the door.
“What is it you
want?” I snapped.
You said nothing, but ran across in one
tempestuous
plunge, and threw your arms around my neck and
kissed
me, and your small arms tightened with an
affection that
God had set blooming in your heart and which
even neglect
could not wither. And then you were gone,
pattering up the
stairs.
Well, son, it was shortly afterwards that my
paper slipped
from my hands and a terrible sickening fear
came over me.
What has habit been doing to me? The habit of
finding fault,
of reprimanding - this was my reward to you for
being a
boy. It was not that I did not love you; it was
that I expected
too much of youth. I was measuring you by the
yardstick of
my own years.
And there was so much that was good and fine
and true in
your character. The little heart of you was as
big as the
dawn itself over the wide hills. This was shown
by your
spontaneous impulse to rush in and kiss me good
night.
Nothing else matters tonight, son. I have come to your bed-side
in the darkness, and I have knelt there,
ashamed!
It is a feeble atonement; I know you would not understand
these things if I told them to you during your
waking
hours. But tomorrow I will be a real daddy! I
will chum
with you, and suffer when you suffer, and laugh
when you
laugh. I will bite my tongue when impatient
words come. I
will keep saying as if it were a ritual: “He is
nothing but a
boy - a little boy!”
I am afraid I have visualized you as a man. Yet
as I see
you now, son, crumpled and weary in your cot, I
see that
you are still a baby. Yesterday you were in
your mother’s
arms, your head on her shoulder. I have asked
too much,
too much.
