This Sunday is Father's Day.  It is  American holdiay with not as much history as Mother's 

Day – or so I thought until I did a little google searching.  I found the following on 

wikipedia:  

 

The first observance of Father's Day actually took place in  Fairmont, West Virginia on 

July 5, 1908. It was organized by Mrs. Grace Golden Clayton, who wanted to celebrate the 

lives of the 210 fathers who had been lost in the Monongah Mining disaster several months 

earlier in Monongah, West Virginia, on December 6, 1907. It's possible that Clayton was 

influenced by the first celebration of Mother's Day that same year, just a few miles away. 

Clayton chose the Sunday nearest to the birthday of her recently deceased father. 

 

A day created to celebrate a particular person in a particular role, with the expectations 

that it be a joyous occasion for all, does not always have its intended effect.

I hope for you that you had a wonderful nurturing experience with your father, and that if 

you are a father that that is a wonderful experience for you.  Yet I want to acknowledge 

that not everyone's experience of fatherhood, either on the receiving end – as a child of 

a father, or the giving end, as the father of a child(ren) is a positive one.  

Perhaps your father spent hours playing with you, talking with you, teaching you to swim, 

to ride a bike – trying to teach you to ice skate, as my father did.  And yet perhaps 

there were other times when you thought he didn't see you, understand who you really are.  

 

OK – so it looks like this is going to have some focus on me and my father – it was not my 

intent when I started to write this, but that's what is coming out on the page, and that 

is what I will share with you in the hopes that some of my story will stir some memories 

in you, perhaps some that you'll be willing to share with us on our Community Call, on 

June 19, 2011, or as a response to this blog.

 

My dad, Lou Frater, tried pretty hard to be a good father.  I know he felt he didn't have 

the greatest relationship with his father, and I'm pretty sure that influenced his 

relationship with me, his only child.  I have great memories of my dad playing tinker toys 

with me – a recent visit with a childhood friend had us reminiscing over the tinker toy elevator and carousel my dad and I built - mostly my dad - complete with moving parts.  He wanted me to know how to swim and ride a bike, two things that I enjoy to this day, 

although I've never gotten into his other favorite activity of ice skating.

 

As a teen, we didn't always get along so well, but I didn't understand why.  Now, looking back, and recalling some of my experiences with him once I was an adult, gave me some insight into that.  I think my dad longed to connect with me, but wasn't sure how.  I didn't understand this longing of his until we had a big argument one day.

 

We had a big blow-up; my dad was upset with me because I was late getting to his apartment with my two young children.  I got mad that he got upset, because he was so often late to meet me.  I got indignant - I had traveled all this extra way with my two young kids to see him, only to get chastised for being late.  And then he told me that he was upset only because he wanted to be able to spend more time with me and my kids, and that he really enjoyed it.  He said it in such a heartfelt way, and I'm tearing up as I'm writing this, 

 

that I knew he was sincere, and I realized that that was probably at the heart of so many of our confrontations with each other.   

And I said to my dad, "why didn't you ever just tell me that - that you wanted to spend more time with me, that you liked spending time with me?"  He didn't really have an answer - at least not one that I remember now - but it didn't matter.  That touched a place in my heart and I was able to open up to having a closer relationship with my dad for the last 5 or so years of his life.

 

When I think back on that, it makes me think of the barriers people often have between each other, or barriers we think are there, but don't really exist.  What might we need to let someone know, what might we ask someone about the character of our interactions.

 

During the last years of his life I was more willing to visit with my dad, to help him with tasks that were getting harder to do - to sing I've Been Working on the Railroad with him - something I had hated when I was younger.  And I could appreciate that even though 

he didn't always have the best ways of showing me things, he always loved me as best he could.

 

My dad died in July 2000.  He had a "good death" as far as I know.  I had worked with him to create all the advance planning documents you could ever imagine.  We had gone over all of his choices about the health care he did and did not want to receive, and everything was documented and signed.  

 

My dad wasn't ill, but he was aging.  At 84 he was finding it harder and harder to be independent.  He did a trial period at an assisted living facility - only because I urged him to consider it.  He was supposed to spend three weeks there, but only lasted three 

days and then came back to his messy apartment.  I had to honor his choice and his desire for independence.  

 

The last time I spoke to my dad was on July 4, 2000 - Independence Day.  He said he was sad because he couldn't go out to the sing-along at the Senior Center- an activity he dearly loved. He didn't like not being independent, and within a week, he had died.  To me it seems like he just decided he had lived enough, and wasn't going to live any more.  

 

He died in his apartment.  The people in his building who found him, told me that when they came into his apartment the radio was on.  That didn't surprise me.  I was pretty sure I knew what station the radio would be tuned to when I turned it on, and was 

delighted to find that indeed, it was on WBAI, the progressive Pacifica station in NY.  I thought that was a pretty good way for my dad to die.

 

I wish I could have had a breakthrough with my dad earlier in my life, in his life.  Yet I am always grateful that we did have that breakthrough, and grateful for the lesson to be open to connections, to be open to my interpretation of another person's behavior being wrong.

 

I still have a big box of tinker toys from my childhood.  I tried to make the carousel with my kids when they were younger, but I never could make it spin like my dad did.  I miss you dad.

 

What are your thoughts and feelings on this Father's Day?  Please share them with us.