#Father'sDay - Fatherhood Has Nothing To Do With Biology.

My natural father died when I was five years old. While I wish he had been around when I was growing up, and I have written about him and his life before, the man who raised me was my step-father, who married my mom when I was in first grade, just two years after my dad died. He and I couldn't have been more different. He was quiet and taciturn and a disciplinarian. He grew up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin, and was a Navy lifer. However, without his urging, I would have spent my youth in a library, and never learned to love baseball, or how to fish, or what hard physical labor was all about. His discipline, and that of the nuns who taught me in parochial school, molded me, and I am fortunate to have had them, even though, at the time, I thought I was in Hell on Earth. When my step-father died, I wrote this poem in his honor, and read it at his funeral. Fatherhood isn't about biology. It is about teaching, and molding, and being there.

He remembered when

he walked 8 batters in a row,

and his father left him in the game.

He remembered when

he wanted to stay in the house

and read a book,

and his Father taught him

to hit a baseball.

He remembered the day

he got to drive the Mustang to school.

His father gave him the keys

and no lectures.

He remembered being punished.

He always believed it hurt his father more.

He remembered the job

unloading box cars on college breaks.

He remembered his father’s hand on his shoulders

in the middle of the night

when he was at the movies.

He remembered working in the yard

on hot Saturdays,

just so he could go to the movies

late in the afternoon.

When his father died,

the priest said pious things

about an honorable man.

He knew that the priest

had no idea

what was on the other side of midnight.

He prayed anyway,

because that is what his father

would have wanted him to do.