The Fatherhood Fraternity
By Azher Quader
Chicago, IL

 

To most of us who belong to this fraternity, membership comes pretty easy, with no fees, in due course of time and almost always with plenty of anticipation but no preparation. Once within its fold, comes the gradual realization of the awesome and often demanding responsibilities that go along with fatherhood.

Many of us learn on the job as we move forward. Some go through a few books and classes but for the most part lose it all when it comes time for reality checks. Those little leaguers are quite good at throwing curved balls at us and we realize soon enough that to stay in the game we have to think pretty fast on our feet. With time many of us will adopt our own modus operandi to survive. Some become playful playmates, others become authority figures, while still others choose to disengage themselves, coil in a corner claiming more important responsibilities of the world and let motherhood take over and rule.

With kindergarten comes welcome relief. A free spirit is going to school, get educated and tamed. The audacity of hope! Then comes high school graduation, a moment of pride, followed by admission to college, a period of pain as the bills start arriving in tormenting regularity. They say with college comes freedom, the end of paternal responsibility, the kid is no longer a kid, is a grown up person. They lie. The rules of engagement change, the headaches increase, the heartaches grow. It is a new dawn, moving into the dorm, cramming a houseful into a roomful; boom box, books, bike and bed. Then it is our power of belief that sustains us.

Faith in the unseen as they call it. Long distance fatherhood requires imagination and a lot of talk time. Reminders we make, to read more, watch grades and party less, rarely register. By now most of us have no clue as to what our pride and joy are studying. There are myriad courses to choose from and someone they call as their counselors and advisers have become their soul mates. We are left out to imagine and to believe. All we see are reports with some numbers and some alphabets. As college concludes, yesterday’s kids arrive at our doors as motivated citizens of today, ready to do battle against all the dragons and demons of a perceived evil society. Some are more earthly and grab the first job that comes their way and go on to become wage earners, to the delight and the relief of their aging dads. Others decide to study more with the promise of making more at some distant date in the future. While we had barely emerged from the poverty imposed by our kid’s undergraduate education, it is graduate education’s turn now to push us back on to the brinks of bankruptcy. Although we complain about our financial fatigue, yet secretly we are proud of our kids’ educational vigor in pursuing these demanding studies. Somewhere around this time fatherhood often makes acquaintance with matrimony. Wedding songs, videos, limousine and honeymoon mark the end of our fatherhood chores and hopefully the beginning of theirs fairly soon.

From the nervous initiates to the confident veterans, clearly the fraternity of fatherhood includes dads of all description. There are the super dads and the dead beat dads. There are the bio dads, the foster dads and the adoptive dads. There are the busy dads and the absent dads. There are the angry dads and the happy dads. There are the disconnected dads and the visiting dads. The fraternity embraces them all. On Fathers Day it recognizes them all and salutes them all.

Many of us are privileged to see our sons growing up to wear this mantle with grace and dignity, with wisdom and responsibility. Some of us are not so fortunate. Born and bred in a nation where family values are tossed and trashed, where marriage has been redefined by the politically tainted wisdom of five, where the incessant messaging of the media has clouded their power to reason and reflect, there are some of our young dads who are missing their mark. Perhaps intoxicated by the elixir of wealth and possessions, perhaps imprisoned in the captivating world of work and profession, fatherhood no longer seems to matter for them. A narcissistic society embraces them to a life of self-indulgence liberating them from the somber chores of fatherhood. They forget to realize that they too are dads. They too have obligations, not just rights. The pain they leave behind when they neglect their important roles is far greater than the pleasures they can ever receive in the pursuit of their other endeavors. To those young dads struggling to find meaning and direction in their tormented lives, we offer some words of experience: you do not have to be perfect but present, not awesome but authentic. And yes the best answer to remember: “Go ask your mom”, always wins.

There is another group of dads among us that sadly deserves a special mention too. While millions of us are feasted and fussed over by our sons and daughters on Father’s Day and while millions of us can hug and kiss and hold them in our tight embrace, there are a few who will not experience this joy and this happiness on Father’s Day this year, nor ever more in the future. For they are the dads of those 4000 plus young men and women who served on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan and gave the ultimate sacrifice for the sake of their country.

And there are the dads of the 50 who perished in a gay nightclub in Orlando just a few days ago.

Our hearts go out to them all. No pain can ever be greater than the pain of losing a son or a daughter in the fullness of youth. No words of comfort can console, no embrace of love can ease, no expression of faith can relieve the hurt that they must feel and the sadness that they must endure.

This is not the place for us to debate the rights and wrongs of a war on terror whose goals have become so fuzzy and whose end so unclear. This is neither the place for us to question how much blood of our sons and daughters spilled, can satisfy the thirst of our leaders for revenge and exchange their sacrifice for our security. Neither is it the time to question our claims that we are winning this war when all we see is chaos and carnage, death and destruction in the wake of wherever we have been. And yes this is not the time to argue if the terror in Orlando was inspired by ISIS or the brain child of a sick mind prone to abuse and consumed by hate.

No, that will be for time and history to judge when the bloodshed will cease and the fires will burn down and the debates have ended. Today we will say a silent prayer for those special fathers in our fraternity who quietly suffer a loss that can never be replaced and whose patriotism and restrained dignity bars them from asking the questions that can never be answered. May Allah give them patience and provide them healing. May Allah bless our families too, as we thank Him for the gift of our children.

(The author is President, Community Builders Council, Chicago)