Father’s Day has come and gone, and I am glad. It was painless, humourless, and it rained all day. There was no drama. And that’s the best way. Like children, some fathers would like to hold their breath till the whole thing blows over.
I belong to the generation where fathers were not superheroes to their children. At no point did my son say, his voice choking, “Dad, you are my hero. Just like Superman.” He might have said, “Dad you are my favourite dinosaur” at a time when dinosaurs were his heroes, but I don’t remember.
We are the butt of jokes, and Father’s Day is an occasion for recalling when a father took the wrong turn and ended up at the wrong school while dropping their children, or chased a dog till he tripped and fell. “You remember when…” begin the reminiscences and you wonder idly why you let your children grow up. Children’s Day was once celebrated in the house with great fanfare; children had their future ahead of them which made them different from fathers whose futures seemed to be behind them.
Father’s Day is an occasion for receiving socks and ties and T-shirts as gifts, which is wonderful if you are running out of these, but not when the collection keeps growing and you have to finally give the lot away. I once saw the postman wearing a T-shirt I had given to the gardener. It meant that the gardener had been as impressed with the T-shirt as I had been, and did exactly what I had done – gave it away to someone else.
When we were much younger, I got a mug on Father’s Day (actually, I was the mug on Father’s Day). It said: ‘World’s Greatest Dad’. The message was clear: sarcasm was my son’s strength.
My own father was uninterested in Father’s Day. I once wrote him a letter which I thought he could sell for a fortune when I became famous, and he returned it with all the spelling mistakes and grammar corrected. I didn’t send him a corrected version, and we never spoke of this or Father’s Day again. It is a wise father who knows his son, said Shakespeare. But it’s a wiser son who knows his father.
I have two types of friends: those who look forward to Father’s Day with eager anticipation, and expect cheery messages and surprise gifts, and those who await it with trepidation for the same reasons. I belong to a third group, and remain in denial for a day, unhappy if the child calls and unhappy if he doesn’t.
I don’t know if mothers have such issues on Mother’s Day, or secretaries on Secretary’s Day or labourers on Labour Day, or indeed valentines on Valentine’s Day. Are they caught in the middle, between expectation and disappointment or expectation and its fulfilment? Do such special days come with any antidotes? If we celebrate a little less will the world stop going around for a little bit?
