fathers

Reading Aloud to My Father I chose the book haphazardfrom the shelf, but with Nabokov's firstsentence I knew it wasn't the thingto read to a dying man:The cradle rocks above an abyss, it began,and common sense tells us that our existenceis but a brief crack of lightbetween two eternities of darkness.The words disturbed both of us immediately,and I stopped. With music it was the same --Chopin's Piano Concerto _ he asked meto turn it off. He ceased eating, and dranklittle, while the tumors briskly appropriatedwhat was left of him.But to return to the cradle rocking. I thinkNabokov had it wrong. This is the abyss.That's why babies howl at birth,and why the dying so often reachfor something only they can apprehend.At the end they don't want their handsto be under the covers, and if you should putyour hand on theirs in a tentative gestureof solidarity, they'll pull the hand free;and you must honor that desire,and let them pull it free.

I'd love to know how Dad saw me when I was 6. I'd love to know a hundred things. When a parent dies, a filing cabinet full of all the fascinating stuff also ceases to exist. I never imagined how hungry I'd be one day to look inside it.

I wanted to ask my father about his regrets. I wanted to ask him what was the worst thing he'd ever done. His greatest sin. I wanted to ask him if there was any reason why the Catholic Church would consider him for sainthood. I wanted to open up his dictionary and find the definitions for faith, hope, goodness, sadness, tomato, son, mother, husband, virginity, Jesus, wood, sacrifice, pain, foot, wife, thumb, hand, bread, and sex. "Do you believe in God?" I asked my father."God has lots of potential," he said."When you pray," I asked him. "What do you pray about?""That's none of your business," he said. We laughed. We waited for hours for somebody to help us. What is an Indian? I lifted my father and carried him across every border.

I remember his eyes. They are just like mine. Every time I look in the mirror I see him. I try not to look at my self too much.

Because Dad told you he'd be here forever. Because I thought forever was like Mars -- far away.

Sometimes we wait too long for the forgiveness of our fathers.

Children are the greatest blessing from God.

Dad had once said, Trust your mind, Rob. If it smells like shit but has writing across it that says Happy Birthday and a candle stuck down in it, what is it?Is there icing on it? he'd said.Dad had done that thing of squinting his eyes when an answer was not quite there yet.

Once she had loved Prince Joffrey with all her heart, and admired and trusted her his mother, the queen. They had repaid that love and trust with her father's head. Sansa would never make that mistake again.

DESTINY (Determined Effort So Tanacious It Negates Yuck)

When I was twenty-something, I asked my father, __hen did you start feeling like a grownup?_ His response: __ever.

If we want to raise children who will remain faithful to Christ and His Church, they need to see fathers on their knees in prayer.

I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren't trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.

Sigmund Freud, the father of psychiatry and an atheist, theorized that one__ attitude toward one__ father largely shaped one__ attitude toward God.

We are not called to fight the battles of our fathers with a blind faith. We are called to examine their wars, and moreover, to discern whether their actions were sinful or just. Furthermore, we are called to decide whether to correct the errors of our fathers battles through either peace, war, or some combination of the two. We are not bonded to our fathers' fate, but rather called to build on their trespasses or triumphs for a better future.

All her young life she has tried to please her father, never quite realizing that, as a girl, she never could.

Good fathers, and by that I mean real fathers who are there, have the ability to change almost every social problem we now find ourselves facing. I__ be assumptive enough to say that there isn__ a single type of crime or a single problem so big that it couldn__ be fixed or wiped out if fathers would just step up.

I am far from a perfect dad. And I always will be. But I__ a damn good dad, and my son will always feel bigger than anything life can throw at him. Why? Because I get it. I get the power a dad has in a child__ life, and in a child__ level of self-belief. I get that everything I ever do and ever say to my son will be absorbed, for good or for bad.