FATHER FORGETS
-W. Livingston Larned
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 tightened 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 a 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, I 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.
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