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| Listen, son... |
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 tightended 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 bedside in the darkness, and I have knelt there,
ashamed! It is 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, 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.~condensed as in “Readers Digest”
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