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| << June14, 2006 - You Might Be From A Small Town If |
June19, 2006 - Off-the-church-walls >> |
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A Father Is
A father is a person who is forced to endure childbirth
without an anesthetic. He growls when he feels good and laughs very loud when he
is scared half-to-death.
A father never feels entirely worthy of the worship in
a child's eyes. He is never quite the hero his daughter thinks. Never quite the
man his son believes him to be. And this worries him sometimes. (So he works too
hard to try to smooth the rough places in the road of those of his own who will
follow him.)
A father is a person who goes to war sometimes ... and
would run the other way except that war is part of his only important job in his
life, (which is making the world better for his child than it has been for
him).
Fathers grow older faster than people, because they, in
other wars, have to stand at the train station and wave goodbye to the uniform
that climbs on board.
And, while mothers cry where it shows, fathers stand
and beam -- outside --
and die inside. Fathers are men who give daughters away to other men,
who aren't nearly good enough, so that they can have children that are smarter
than anybody's.
Fathers fight dragons almost daily. They hurry away
from the breakfast table, off to the arena which is sometimes called an office
or a workshop. There, with callused hands, they tackle the dragon with three
heads; Weariness, Works, and Monotony. And they never quite win the fight, but
they never give up.
Knights in shining armor; fathers in shiny trousers.
There's little difference as they march away each workday.
I don't know where a father goes when he dies, but I've
an idea that, after a good rest, wherever it is, he won't just sit on a cloud
and wait for the girl he's loved and the children she bore. He'll be busy there
too -- repairing the stars, oiling the gates, improving the streets, smoothing
the way.
~by Paul Harvey~
Kevin Rayner
Rochester, MN
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